1

Introduction
An integral part of the concept of a state is the control
over a distinct territorythe 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 every
state, 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 will
not 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

MANAGING PIETY

political purposes. One example is St Pauls Church in

Frankfurt, which was used for housing Germanys first
elected parliament in 184849. 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 Americas first indigenous state leader in
January 2006. There are numerous other examples pointing
to the fact that religious sites are not excluded from politics
but 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

Introduction

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
todays 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 the
Swat 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

MANAGING PIETY

control of religious sites in the country, it is surprising how

little attention has been given to the way in which shrines
in 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 been
Data 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 Pakistans

cultural hub and second largest city, Lahore. It has been

Introduction

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 Saints
death (conceptualized as the final union or marriage [ursin
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 secondary
source of information for this book.
Given the fact that the Shrine is today considered one of
Pakistans most important religious sites and possibly is
South Asias 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 Pakistans 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 or
brotherhood (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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Another reason could be its relatively late emergence as a

shrine of more than just regional importance. This happened
largely 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 ulHaq. With this appropriation came
major architectural changes to the Shrine, that have altered
the 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 working
on Pakistani shrines put it: They have taken away the
character and atmosphere of the placea 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 Pakistans national poet Muhammad Iqbal. Apart
from saving the poor from exploitation, another reason
for taking over the shrines was to acquire their incomes.

Introduction

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 statecontrolled 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), khusre2, 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

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 Shrines 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.

Introduction

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, and
especially journalists, trying to point out that Islam isnt 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, Pakistanfor those who think Pakistan is all
hardliners, 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 Islam
is practised here, a tradition that goes back a thousand years
to Islams 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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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 of
the 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

Introduction

11

Asia with a notion of backwardness and a rural population

trapped in traditions of which venerating the saints is just
one 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 so
attractive 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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MANAGING PIETY

Emotion in Sufi Cults edited by Pnina Werbner and Helene

Basu (1998) and the second edition of the volume, Muslim
Shrines in India: Their Character, History and Significance
edited by Carl W. Troll (2005). Trolls collection concentrates
on shrines in India but four articles from Werbner and Basu
are directly concerned with Pakistani shrines. From Trolls
collection one article is in particular worth mentioning,
Religion, Money and Status: Competition for Resources at
the 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 of
shrines 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). To
give a more concrete example of what these other possible
world orders are, the following statement is of use: []
commodity economy is converted at a saints 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).

Introduction

13

At first sight this view contradicts strongly with the main

thesis of this work. Instead, however, I would argue that
Werbner and Basus 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 one
of the fundamental aspects of the states 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 states 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 this
image. 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

14

MANAGING PIETY

of Sufism: Redefining the Saints of Pakistan by Katherine

Ewing (1983). Gilmartins article is the most cited reference
for 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 later
the 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 urs
ceremonies). 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.

Introduction

15

(Ibid., 489). The new powers, the Sikh and British, that
followed the Mughals did not rely in the same extent on
these 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 (17031762), a Muslim reformer who influenced
the 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 continued
to 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., 4901).

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 the
Barelwis. Formally the Barelwis are followers of the Aalim
Ahmed Rida Khan (18551919) from Bareilly, a city in
northern India. The self-descriptive name of the movement
was Ahl-e-Sunnat wal Jamaat, 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. Gilmartins 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 Ewings 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

Introduction

17

main figures shaping Pakistani politics from the late 1950s

to the late 1980s, Ayub Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Zia
ulHaq, 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 more
than just a deplorable institution, but rather a potential for
social reform and influence. The overall policies towards the
shrines in Ewings 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 makes
up an important part of the shrines 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 Zias time and his
Islamization policy, another example besides Ewing being
the work by Jamal Malik to which we will now turn.
Jamal Maliks 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 ulHaqs

dictatorship and focusses on the years between 1977
and 1984, and Zias 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 countrys
shrines as mainly a political move aiming at bringing an
otherwise potentially dangerous institution for the state
under bureaucratic control. Maliks 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 traces
the 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.

Introduction

19

Ewing first elaborates on how the discourse on Sufism

and saints developed during the colonial period. The most
important 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 in
space 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 the
European 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.,4750).
Thus parallel to the Muslim reformers criticism of practices
at shrines with arguments of orthodox Islam, the British

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MANAGING PIETY

identified various activities by the Sufis, especially begging,

wandering and the use of drugs, as clear signs of antisocial
behaviour, 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 rebellion
against God. (Ibid., 589).
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., 93127) 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
Ewings 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

Introduction

21

of discussions held at Data Darbar, especially within the

administration.
From Ewings 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 Rozehnals Islamic
Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-First Century
Pakistan (2009). Rozehnals study is essentially about the
identity of one of the subcontinents most important Sufi
orders (silsila), the Chishti Sabiri brotherhood. The reason
Rozehnals 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 Rozehnals 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 (Rozehnals 2009,
230).
The question of identity is also central to a recent thesis on
two Pakistani shrines, Sufi Shrines and Identity-Construction

22

MANAGING PIETY

in Pakistan: The Mazars of Saiyid Pir Waris Shah and Shah

Abdul Latif Bhittai by Uzma Rehman (2011).8 Rehman
points 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, where
the identity of visitors is strongly connected to the saints
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 Hujwiris 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 saints poetrys importance for this language
(Ibid., 81).
The strength of both Rozehnals and Rehmans 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

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, 6590; Rozehnal 2009, 1938; 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 ulHaq 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 Sufisms 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

24

MANAGING PIETY

shrines came under state control, the state is simply one

agent, in most cases the direct tool of the particular leader
in 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 more
explanation, 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 partys or military rulers 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.

Introduction

25

1.3Methodology

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 as
I 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 stranger
touching 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, the
general atmosphere of excitement intensified and eventually
I left, exhausted without having made my way into the
complex.

26

MANAGING PIETY

The next day I went again, during the day, when the
crowds were fewer and the sounds and smells were more
bearable. 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 Saints 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 womens 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 managers office. Just in front of this office I
was asked by a man in his thirties, well dressed and with a
finely-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

Introduction

27

and making observations, and that later this year I would

return for a much longer period of time. The face in front
of 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 large
part 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
Shrines 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.

28

MANAGING PIETY

During the second fieldwork, more than a hundred visits

to the Shrine were made, again with a focus on participant
observation. Unrecorded interviews with management,
administration, shopkeepers, subcontractors (for shoekeeping 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 doctors
and 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 hotel
managers. 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 the
Shrine, 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,

Introduction

29

either in English or in Urdu, with a translator present and

with few exceptions were recorded for transcription. Video
footage 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 that
one 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 wasnt 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 be
at. 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. This
shifted 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

30

MANAGING PIETY

that were presented at the beginning of this introduction,

questions about the relationship between the state, public
space, 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
Shrines administration and management.
During the fieldwork I tried to live as close to the Shrine as
possible, which became unfeasible when my family joined

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 I
also 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 of
the time that I was accompanied by my family, we lived in
Model Town, a semi-gated community in Lahores southeast. 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 job
at 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

32

MANAGING PIETY

the overall most massive change to the Shrine in the three

years from the first to last fieldwork of this study, was the
ever 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

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 given
to 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 states, or the political elites 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 hopes
to 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

34

MANAGING PIETY

an argument. An analytical discussion of the findings of

the individual chapters will be presented together with a
summary 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 person
that 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 Saints shrine, and
not 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 a
short overview of what the Shrine looked like in 2009 (the
beginning of my fieldwork).

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 private
actors 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 states 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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MANAGING PIETY

specific association with the state. Some of the consequences

the attacks have had both on the administration as well as
the 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 Shrines
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.

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 just Hujwiri,
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 history
and his own sole surviving book the Kashf al-Mahjub
(TheRevelation of the Veil). Considered the first treatise
on Sufism in Persian 11 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 alMahjub there are few sources available containing
original information about the Saint, the first one being the

38

MANAGING PIETY

Safinat al-Awliya (Ship of the saints), written six centuries

later by the Mogul prince Dara Shikoh, containing only
a 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 by
Reynold A. Nicholson (19111976). It is based largely on
the information found in the Kashf al-Mahjub, although
he also makes some use of Dara Shikohs 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 Suvorovas
work, Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to fifteenth
centuries.
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 the
two 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.

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, 378).
Nicholsons careful approximation is that he was born either
in the last decade of the tenth century or in the first one
of the eleventh century (Nicholson in Hujwiri 1976). As
his full name and nisba13 implies, Hujwiri was from the
town of Ghazni (in todays 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 total
of 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 alMahjub
a number of times (Hujwiri 1976, 2). The majority of
statements in the book about Hujwiris personal life are
connected 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, IXX). Abu l-Qasim Gurgani (Hujwiri 1976, 169) and Kwaja
Muzaffar (Hujwiri 1976, 170) are also mentioned as giving
him instructions. Through Khuttali, Hujwiri is connected
via Husri and Shibli to the most important Sufi of the
early times, Junayd of Baghdad. Hujwiris travels extended

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MANAGING PIETY

throughout all of the Ghaznavid empire as well as beyond

it, e.g. Damascus in Syria (see Fig. 1). He travelled as far
as Ramla (in Syria) in the west, the region Faris (in todays
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 Sebk Tigi (ad
9711030) known also as Mahmud Ghaznavi. Mahmud
reigned from ad 998 until his death in ad 1030, a period
in which the Ghaznavid empire saw a massive expansion
including almost all of todays Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan
and parts of northern India. Mahmud turned his capital
Ghazni into a rival of Baghdad in terms of arts, literature
and 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 Mahmud
Ghaznavi (Hujwiri 2010, 362). No other names of rulers
are mentioned, most likely because none of the Ghaznavid
kings, including Mahmuds sons, stayed in power for very
long until Mahmuds grandson Ibrahim took power in ad
1059. We know little of when and for how long Hujwiri
stayed in the many places mentioned, but the larger areas of
Iraq, 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

The Perfect Saint

41

met over three hundred saints in Khurasan alone residing

separately and who had such mystical endowments that a
single 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, 4034) 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
([Link] 2007).
When Hujwiri mentions Lahore we find that he was
brought 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 likely
that this happened after the Ghaznavids lost large parts of
their western territories. This included the loss of Merv
(ad 1037), Nishapur and Herat (ad 1038) and a decisive
loss in the Battle of Dandanqan (ad 1040) (Ghaznavid
Dynasty 2012). Carl W. Ernst (1999, 1) sets the date of
arrival in Lahore to ad 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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MANAGING PIETY

why he remained childless: After Allah had preserved me

for eleven years from the dangers of matrimony, it was my
destiny 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 Hujwiris year of death
(cf. Nicholson in Hujwiri 1976, x-xi). The most accepted
view is that he died in either ad 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 the
mid-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, but
also more specifically, of Pakistani Islam.

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43

2.2 The Kashf al-Mahjub

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 Said al-Hujwiri (who
had come to Lahore with him).
The questioner, Abu Said 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 up with great commitment.
The book can be divided into four major parts: An
introduction to practices and concepts generally connected
with Sufism, including chapters on knowledge, poverty, the
wearing of patched frocks, opinions held on poverty and
purity and on blame. The second part is concerned with
the most important figures in Muslim history, beginning
with the Prophet (pbuh), then the companions of the

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MANAGING PIETY

Prophet (pbuh), the imams, etc. and ending with the

Sufis of his time. The third part is a chapter dealing with
the different schools/sects of Sufis and their doctrines,
which takes up almost a quarter of the book. According
to Nicholson, it is the first time that someone classifies
the diverse lines of Sufis in a systematic matter and
Nicholson sees this chapter as the most influential for
later writers both in terms of content but also regarding
its structure (Nicholson in Hujviri 1976, xiiixiv). Finally,
a fourth part deals with the eleven veils, each of which has
its own chapter in which they are uncovered, called The
Uncovering of the First Veil: Concerning the Gnosis of
God, The Uncovering of the Second Veil: Concerning
Unifications and so on.
The more academic style of the Kashf al-Mahjub resembles
that of another important work known simply as the
Risala or Treatise by a contemporary of Hujwiri, Qushayri
(cf. Knysh 2000, 133 and Karamustafa 2007, 99). Both
works fall into a new category of writings, not merely
being a discussion of particular aspects of Sufism or a
number of biographies, as did many writers before them,
but instead combining the two. They play an important role
in the formation of a normative Sufism as pointed out by
Ahmet T. Karamustafa in his work, Sufism: the Formative
Period. According to Karamustafa, Hujwiri and Qushayris
works had several aims. One was to preserve the legacy
of the first Sufis of Baghdad, namely Junayd and his
companions, of whom no direct disciples were now alive,
apparently making it seem necessary to write about their

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45

lives and sayings (Karamustafa 2007, 83). Another aim was

to distinguish their teaching from competing schools of
thought and, since both saw the current time as one filled
with would-be Sufis or pretenders of Sufism, to preserve
the real Sufism (Karamustafa 2007; 84, 99100).
For the purpose of this studyto understand why and how
the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh has evolved and serves
today as a central place for the government/political elite
of the Punjab/Pakistan to promote a certain view of Islam
the analysis of the Kashf al-Mahjub will be limited to those
paragraphs dealing with topics generally subject to debate
in Pakistan today. Of these there are many. Topics that are
important today, seem to have been so in Hujwiris time
as well, e.g. the question whether or not Sufi sheikhs can
mediate between common man and God, if it is permissible
to listen to music or if Sufis can reach stages in their path
towards a union with God in which they can be exempted
from the obligations and prohibitions of Islam, e.g. the
daily prayers or the consumption of alcohol. As has been
pointed out by several scholars of South Asian Islam
(cf. Sirriyeh 1999, 501) not only was the subcontinent
a place in which a large variety of Sufi practices were
established, it was also one of the areas where the reaction
and condemnation of these practices took shape in diverse
groups, such as the Deobandis or the Ahl-e-Hadith, the
former a reform movement within Sufism itself, the second
one a movement similar to the Wahhabi/Salafi movement
entirely against any Sufi practices. I will now deal with
several of these critical questions in detail.

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One of the most generally found criticisms of the veneration

of Sufi saints is that all Muslims are equal before God and
saints can therefore not have a special position towards God
as indicated by the term wali (friend) or auliya (friends) of
God, widely used for the Sufi masters. Hujwiri spends a
considerable time discussing the position of saints, dealing
with it when differentiating between prophets and saints.
His first statement can be found in the introduction, where
he explains why the book is called The Revelation of the
Veil. As he says, beware that save Allahs saints and His
chosen friends, the rest of the mankind is veiled from the
subtlety of the spiritual truth. (Hujwiri 2010, 12) and later:
I have composed this book to polish the hearts of those
who are subject to hajab ghayni (veil of clouding), but in
whom the substance of light of the truth is existent, in
order that the veil may be lifted from them by the blessing
of reading it, and that they may find their way to spiritual
reality. But those who are habitually defiant of the truth
and followers of falsehood, and they may be presented with
ample proofs, will never find their way thither, and this
book will be of no use to them (Ibid., 13).
His distinction between the common man and the Sufi
sheikhs often leads him to talk about those Sufis whom
he considers heretics or pretenders of Sufism (Ibid., 103).
I will later return to to such statements, because they
show a key concept in Hujwiris thinking, namely that of
intention. With concern to the differences between Sufi
sheikhs and prophets, Hujwiri deals with this in one of
the sub-chapters on the different sects of Sufism. Each of

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47

the presented sects or schools is given by him a distinct

concept being particular prominent in their teachings. This
way he explains a number of concepts including the concept
of miracles, which marks an important difference between
saints and prophets. For Hujwiri:
[] auliya (friends) of Allah are those whom He has specially
distinguished by His friendship and walayat (sainthood). They
are His deputies in His kingdom and have been marked out
to manifest His actions. They have been blessed with diverse
kinds of virtues and karamat (miracles). Allah has purged
them of their natural corruptions and has delivered them from
subjugation to their lower soul and passion, and now their
liberality and thoughts are only of Him and their intimacy
is with Him alone. Such friends of Allah have been in the
past; they are now also and shall be hereafter until the Day
of Resurrection. (Ibid., 251)

This notion, that some are chosen to have a different status

towards God than others, was already criticized during
Hujwiris time by the Mutazilites (a theological school of
Islam prominent in Baghdad and Basra in the 8th10th
century) and Hujwiri also presents their arguments.
However, he holds against them that: The Mutazilites deny
the superiority of any Muslim over other Muslims. But if
you deny the peculiarity of a saint, then particularization of
the Prophets is also denied and this is infidelity (Ibid., 252)
and in short, the command of faith implies on commons,
and command of karamat (miracles) imply on elects. Again,
to deny special privileges is manifestly unreasonable, as in
the kings court there are chamberlains, janitors, grooms,
and viziers, who being royal servants, are all equal, but

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MANAGING PIETY

everyone is distinguished with a different rank. Similarly,

all the believers are equal in respect of their faith, but some
are obedient, some wise, some pious, and some ignorant i.e.
to deny a quality is denial of the object (Ibid., 254).
Thus, for Hujwiri, saints do in fact hold a special position
for God. The miracles (karamat) saints can perform are of
a special kind, however, and this at least in part relativizes
their power.
The mujiza (the miracle that only prophets can perform)
involves publicity and the beauty of karamat (the miracle
saints can perform) lies in its secrecy, because the benefit of
mujiza reaches to others, while the fruitation of karamat is
peculiar to the performer. Again, the performer of mujiza is
quite sure of his miracle, whereas the performer of the karamat
cannot be sure whether he has really performed a karamat or
is deceived insensibly. He who performs mujiza has authority
over the Shariat (Religious law) and in arranging it he denies
or affirms, as Allah commands him. On the other hand, he
who performs karamat has no choice but to resign himself
(to Allahs will) and to accept the ordinances that are laid
upon him, because the karamat of a saint is never in anyway
incompatible with the Shariat of the Prophet. (Ibid., 260)

The central difference is therefore that the Prophet has

authority over the sharia, while the saints do not. This is an
important distinction, because it establishes the supremacy
of the sharia over the actions of the saints. The sharia
is a reappearing subject of Hujwiris writing, indicating
that even during his time there was a discussion about
those Sufis who did not oblige to the sharia under certain

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49

circumstances, the core of another prominent criticism

towards Sufis in South Asia. How central the sharia is
to Hujwiris understanding of Islam can be seen in the
following statements:
Knowledge is immense and life is short, therefore, it is not
obligatory for the human beings to learn every aspect of
knowledge, such as Astronomy, Medicine, and Arithmetic,
etc. but only so much of each as desirous upon by the Shariat.
(Ibid., 19)
Neglect of Shariat is the worst mischief that can happen to a
novice. (Ibid., 127)
A group of heretics who have adopted Sufism assert that
service (devotion) of Allah is necessary only while one is
asserting for saintship, but that after one has become a saint
service is annulled. This is clearly a deviation as there is no
maqam (station) on the way to the Truth where devotion or
any obligation of service is abolished. (Ibid., 257)
If love is true then it is easier to follow the command of the
beloved. This is a refutation of those heretics who declare that
a man may attain to such a degree of love that obedience is
no longer required of him, a doctrine which is sheer heresy. It
is impossible that any person, while he is fully in his senses,
should be relieved of his religious obligations. (Ibid., 365)

Here Hujwiri touches upon another important topic, that of

intoxication. While he does not dismiss states of ecstasy or
intoxication in its entirety, when he discusses the different
sheikhs attitudes towards sobriety and intoxication he
clearly positions himself on one side: Junaid and his
followers prefer sahw (sobriety) to sukr (intoxication).

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MANAGING PIETY

[] My Sheikh, who followed the doctrine of Junaid,

said: `Sukr (intoxication) is childs play, but sobriety is the
death field of men. I, in agreement with my Sheikh, say
that the perfection of the state of the intoxicated man is
sobriety and the lowest stage of sobriety is the perception
of powerlessness of human nature, therefore, even that
sobriety which may lead to some injury is better than sukr
(intoxication) because intoxication is a total catastrophe
(Ibid., 215, 217).
In this way Hujwiri takes a moderate view on one of the
most controversial figures of early Sufism, Mansur al Hallaj,
executed in ad 922 for heresy. Hujwiri excuses Hallaj for
his sayings, even though he does not agree with him on the
following basis: Since Hallaj was an ecstatic and not firmly
settled, therefore, it is not recommended to follow his
sayings. [] Some theologians reject him on the ground
that his sayings refer to transmigration and union. But the
fault lies with the expression, not in the meaning. A person
overcome with ecstasy has not the power of expressing
himself correctly. Besides, the meaning of the expression
may be difficult to apprehend, so that people mistake the
writers intention, and repudiate not his real meaning but a
notion which they have formed for themselves (Ibid., 178).
Here we find an aspect of Hujwiris thinking that is evident
throughout his entire work and extremely important.
Whenever he presents views on a topic by different sheikhs
or schools he ascertains this difference as one in language
and use of words rather than in meaning, for example when
writing about those objecting to the practice of listening

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51

to poems, where he says: There are many groups of such

objectors and each has a different reason to support their
arguments(Ibid., 478). He also formulates this in general:
The real essence of Sufism lies amidst the sayings and
traditions of the Sheikhs, and its division among different
Sufi sects is only figuratively and formally (Ibid., 204).
Another such aspect, that of intention, has already been
mentioned. He does not criticize Hallaj for his faults of
expression, because he had the right intentions. In a similar
way he also distinguishes an act done with sincerity from
one without:
Act only becomes an action in virtue of its sincerity. Sincerity
bears the same relation with action as the spirit to the body,
as the body without spirit is a lifeless thing, so an act without
sincerity is useless. Sincerity is an inward of all the actions,
whereas acts of devotion belong to the class of external
actions. The latter are completed by the former, while the
former derive their value from the latter. Although a man
should keep his heart sincere for a thousand years, it is not
sincerity until his sincerity is combined with action; and
although he should perform external actions for a thousand
years, his actions do not become acts of devotion until they
are combined with sincerity. (Ibid., 107)

The superficial enactment of Sufi practices by aspirants is

therefore a thorn in the side for Hujwiri and he criticizes
these on several occasions, e.g.: It is unlawful to play
dishonestly with the dress of the saints because it is better
to remain a true Muslim than falsely pretending like Sufis
(Ibid., 65). On another occasion (Hujviri 1976, 69) Hujwiri

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MANAGING PIETY

presents an anecdote in which he encountered a group

of Sufis while travelling through Khurasan, treating him
with disrespect because he did not carry the Sufi regular
equipment, indicating again that such paraphernalia, also
very common today, have little to say about the inner state
or devotion of a Sufi, a standpoint held by many later critics
of South Asian Sufism. Hujwiri sees the discredit given to
the Sufis as a result of those who enter the path of Sufism
with the wrong intentions:
When the people of our time see these formalists among
the aspirants to Sufism, and become aware of their raqs
(whirling), see them deeply involved in enjoying singing,
visiting the courts of sultans for the sake of meager benefits,
they consider all Sufis to be alike. They also consider that
the principles of Sufism and tenets of the ancient Sufis were
just the same. They do not recognize that this is an era of
affliction where Sultans are acting with tyranny and people
are mostly committed to evils. Ostentation incites the ascetic
to hypocrisy, and vanity incites the Sufis to dance and singing.
You must know that the seekers who hold the doctrine can
vanish but principles on which these are based cannot become
extinct. The evil lies in the practitioners, not in the principles
on which these are based. If some scoffers disguise their follies
in the earnestness of true mystics, the earnestness of the later
is not thereby turned to folly. (Ibid., 55)

There are several similar statements, e.g. regarding the

audition of music, where Hujwiri again does not see the
practice as such as a problem, but the intention with which
it is performed. This topic is particularly important as music
plays a very prominent role at South Asian Sufi shrines but

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53

is also, along with the use of drugs and dancing, one of

Sufisms most contested elements. For a large shrine such as
Data Darbar the administration therefore needs to carefully
consider in which way to organize musical concerts. The
position of Ali Hujwiri is particularly convenient because
it allows for an interpretation both for and against the
qawwali sessions:
Its lawfulness depends on circumstances and cannot be
asserted absolutely. If audition produces a lawful effect on
the mind, then it is lawful but it is unlawful if the effect is
unlawful and permissible if the effect is permissible. []
Actually audition is like the sun, which shines on everything
but each gets its affect according to its degree and capacity.
(Ibid., 469)

In regards to dancing Hujwiri is very clear in his

disapproval, however leaving a backdoor open for those
who, while being in an ecstatic state should move in ways
that resemble dancing.
You must know that dancing has no foundation either in
the Shariat (religious law) or in Sufism. [] Since ecstatic
movements and the practices of those who endeavour to
induce ecstasy resemble it, therefore, some frivolous imitators
have indulged in it immoderately and considered it as if it was
the part of the practices of Sufism []. However, when the
heart throbs with exhilaration and rapture becomes intense
and the agitation of ecstasy is manifested and the limitations
of the conventional forms are gone, that agitation is neither
dancing nor foot play nor bodily indulgence, but a dissolution
of the soul. Those who call it dancing are utterly wrong.
(Ibid.,483)

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MANAGING PIETY

The Kashf al-Mahjub thus contains a number of passages

that can be cited today as an authority on questions
regarding the rightfulness of certain practices. However,
when considering reasons for its importance today, an
undeniable factor lies in the way it is composed as Ahmet
Karamustafa has pointed out:
In the process (of presenting various theoretical issues), he
(Hujwiri) delineated the boundaries of normative Sufism
without, however, homogenizing or levelling significant
differences of opinion current among Sufi masters, even
while he took special care to identify and explain his own
preferences among the different views he expounded. In
this manner, he managed to draw a broad portrait of Sufism
and mystical movements that included the eastern Hanafi
milieu (for instance, detailed presentation of Tirmidhi), and
even provided more coverage on the Path of Blame than
did Qushayri, who refrained from describing Malamatis in
detail even though he was from Nishapur, the home of the
Malamati orientation. It is possible to see this ecumenical
approach of Hujwiri as another permutation of the fusion
of Sufism and legal-theological scholarship that Qushayri
had accomplished before him so effectively: like this latter,
Hujwiri used scholarly, specifically theological, tools to process
Sufism for himself and for his readers. In so doing, he not
only broadened the scope of Sufism to include indigenous
mystical trends like the way of the hakims and the Path of
Blame but also rendered this inclusive Sufism intelligible to
cultural elites familiar with the approaches and idioms of the
world of scholarship. (Karamustafa 2007, 103)

Thus the Kashf al-Mahjub and its ecumenical approach not

only brings together various Sufi schools and plays down

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55

their differences as superficial, but also opens Sufism to

parts of society that might have rejected it otherwise. As we
will see shortly, Ali Hujwiri and his Kashf al-Mahjub have
therefore been particularly well received by the political and
social elite of colonial and postcolonial Pakistani society.
2.3 The Perfect Saint

When Pakistan became an independent state in 1947

it faced a major problem of identity. Being, like many
former colonies, a state with a territory that had never
existed in this form before and then being divided into
two geographically separated entities after the 1971 war
that gave birth to Bangladesh, Pakistanis had neither a sole
common history, language or culture. The only common
ground, and the reason it was split-up from India, was
that the majority of the people were Muslims. It was
therefore clear that Islam needed to play a prominent part
in constructing a national identity. The problem was, and
still is, however, that one can hardly speak of one Islam
when looking at the various practices and beliefs evident
in the country (cf. Ewing 1997, 667; Rehman 2006). The
biggest division is that of Shia and Sunni, still causing
many deaths in violent conflicts every year. Within the
Shia there are Twelver-Shias and Ismailis and within the
Sunni there are a number of different sects most prominent
in Pakistan today, the Barelwis, Deobandis, Ahl-e-Hadith
and recently Salafi (sometimes referred to as Wahhabis
and often named together with the Ahl-e-Hadith).14 All of
these groups are rooted in specific areas and specific social

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MANAGING PIETY

groups (Malik 1996, 6). It is therefore scarcely surprising

that divisions between different Muslim groups have been
viewed as a potential threat to national unity from the
very beginning of Pakistans history as a nation state. Since
those who gained access to power after independence
where largely from the colonial sector in the sense that
they were educated within the colonial system and often
shared western values, many of the leading political figures
(most prominently Ayub Khan) also shared a dislike
for traditional society, including religious institutions,
since these were viewed as an obstacle for modernization
(cf. Khan 1967). The political elite was thus confronted
with a situation of having to, on the one hand, define a
national identity for which there was little else available
than a common religion, while on the other hand seeing
the diverse dividing lines within this religion potentially
becoming fuel for separatist movements and generally
being seen as a hindrance to development. It is against
this backdrop that we can now turn to the question why
the Shrine of Ali Hujwiri emerged as a symbol of national
identity instead of one of the many other sacred places,
many of which where more important at the time Pakistan
became independent.
The first political figure to write about Ali Hujwiri was
Dara Shikoh in his Safinat al-Awliya. The son of the Mogul
emperor Shah Jahan and brother and rival for the throne of
Aurangzeb, Dara Shikoh, was himself a follower of Sufism
and disciple of Mian Mir, one of Lahores most important
saints, respected also by the Sikhs.15 Dara Shikoh was also a
friend of the seventh Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Har Rai, and,

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57

like his great grandfather Akbar, was interested in building

bridges between the major faiths of the subcontinent. About
the Kashf al-Mahjub he said that: Among the books on
tasawwuf (Sufism) not even one has been composed so well
as the Revelation of the Veiled and no one can raise any
objection to it. (Dara Shikoh 1965, 22 in Suvorova 2004, 40).
The last phrase emphasizes again the ecumenical character of
the Kashf al-Mahjub mentioned earlier as an important part
of Hujwiris popularity in Mogul times. Maybe even more
important however, is the following statement: He surpasses
all the saints of India and no new saint can set foot on this
land without first obtaining his spiritual permission.(Dara
Shikoh 1965, 149 in Suvorova 2004, 55).

The concept of having to ask permission from Ali Hujwiri

to enter the subcontinent is evident not only in the
narratives about a number of other important South Asian
Sufis making halt at the shrine, but has also been used by
politicians of our time to associate themselves with this
father-figure of South Asian Islam. In this manner Benazir
Bhutto in 1986 and Nawaz Sharif in 2007 both made
the Shrine their first stop after coming back to Pakistan
from exile. Among the Sufis said to have entered the
subcontinent and stopped at Data Darbar were Moinuddin
Chishti, Baba Farid, Mian Mir, Madho Lal Husain, Sultan
Bahu and Bulleh Shah, all revered saints in Pakistan today.
Although a remarkable list, one should keep in mind that
Lahore was one of the stations on the Great Trunk Road
from Central Asia (Kabul) to the Indian cities of Delhi and
Agra (and further to Chittagong in todays Bangladesh). A
stop here was thus almost inevitable.

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Of the saints mentioned above, Moinuddin Chishti

deserves special attention. Generally viewed to be the most
important saint of South Asia, his shrine in Ajmer is Indias
largest Muslim shrine today. At the Shrine of Data Ganj
Bakhsh a small chilla gah can be found at the southern
side of the ghulam gardish (veranda around the tomb) (see
Fig.14). Chilla is a term derived from the Persian word for
forty and is used for the practice of seclusion and fasting for
forty days, carried out by Sufis for meditation. Moinuddin
Chishti is said to have been sitting in chilla at the Shrine
of Data Ganj Bakhsh and the place he is supposed to
have stayed at is called the chilla gah. It is noteworthy that
while his visit to the Shrine is mentioned in a number of
early writings, including the safinat al-awliya, it is not
until 1864 that the chilla is mentioned by Noor Ahmed
Chishti, a Lahori teacher of the British, who at the request
of one of his students, a high rank official named William
Coldstream (not the British painter by the same name)
wrote a book on the shrines and other buildings of Lahore
called Tehqiqat-e Chishti (Chishtis inquiries) (Chishti
1996) (cf. Shahzad 2011, 162; Glover 2008, 1889). Chishti
based his knowledge solely on interviews done with the
caretakers of the shrines and according to Ghafer Shahzad
there is no further evidence that Moinuddin Chishti
actually sat in chilla at the Shrine, since this event would
most likely have been mentioned in the malfuzat (sayings)
of the Chishtis or in the safinat al-awliya (Shahzad 2011,
1667). However, since its mentioning by Noor Ahmed
Chishti the story has become a common-known fact
about the Shrine, repeated in almost all works written

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59

about Hujwiri, the Shrine or the Kashf al-Mahjub and the

chilla gah is visited by many followers of the Chishti order
today. What supports Shahzads scepticism is that visitors
at the shrine of Moinuddin Chishti often do not know
either about the chilla gah or even the Shrine of Data Ganj
Bakhsh (in contrast the Chishti shrine of Baba Farid in
Pakpattan is well known).16
An important remainder of Chishtis visit to the Shrine is
a couplet of the saint about Ali Hujwiri:
The bestower of treasure of the universal blessing, the
manifestation of Divine Light. The Perfect spiritual inspirer
to the raw (and uninitiated) and a guide for those on the path
of Perfection. (Azhari in Hujwiri 2001, 58)

This short poem is inscribed a number of times in the

complex of Data Darbar, most prominently on the outside
of the ghulam gardish (see Fig. 2). The term bestower of
treasure used by Chishti has since become part of the
name given to Ali Hujwiri, comprising of the sanskrit
word for giver, Data and the Ganj Bakhsh used by Chishti
(this mixture of Sanskrit and Persian is seen by Anna
Surovova (2004, 53) as a clear sign that the Shrine was
used by both Muslims and Hindus, a view supported by
Latif s description of the Shrine in the 1890s (Latif 1981,
180)). Today many also simply refer to him as Data Sahib.
Whether or not Moinuddin Chishti just visited the Shrine
or stayed in chilla there, the Chishti order has since had a
special relationship to Data Ganj Bakhsh. As has been said,
many Chishtis visit the Shrine regularly and the connection

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MANAGING PIETY

can also be seen on posters sold in the markets around

the Shrine depicting Moinuddin Chishti either with or
without Data Ganj Bakhsh in front of Data Darbar (two
such examples can be found in Frembgen 2006; 234).
The close connection between the Chishti brotherhood
and Data Ganj Bakhsh is also evident in the fact that the
Chishti sheikhs do otherwise refrain from visiting shrines
outside their order, but do so in the case of Data Darbar
(Rozehnal 2007, 199200). Rozehnal quotes a letter written
in this regard from one of the most important sheikhs of
the Chishti order in Pakistan, Wahid Bakhsh Sial Rabbani
(19101995) to one of his female disciples: Do not go to
any mazar (shrine) which is not in our silsila (order). []
Although Hazrat Data Sahab, may God have mercy upon
him, is not in the line of our silsila directly, he is great
enough to know what you need. Moreover, he is very much
associated with the mashaikh (plural for sheikh) of our
silsila. He is very kind to us (Rozehnal 2007, 199).
Wahid Bakhsh Rabbani was well versed with the Kashf alMahjub providing a commented translation into English
(Hujwiri 1997), feeling that Nicholsons translation could
be misinterpreted in certain parts (Ernst 1999, 56).
As both Rozehnal (2007, 62, 656) and Ernst (1999, 6)
point out, there was also a very close relationship between
Hujwiri and another important Chishti leader, Sheikh
Shahidullah Faridi (19151978) and his brother Faruq
Ahmed (19131945), whose story of conversion, and in
the later case death, is well known not only among Chishti
disciples. Born into a rich English family, then known as

The Perfect Saint

61

John Gilbert Lennard and John William Lennard, they

started their spiritual journey and conversion to Islam
after having read Nicholsons translation of the Kashf alMahjub in their twenties. Through various stations and
Sufi teachers in British India they were finally introduced
into the Chishti brotherhood in 1938. Faruq Ahmed died
in February 1945 and it was his wish to be buried within
the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh in proximity to the Saint
that had initiated his conversion. As the story goes: []
there were insufficient funds to fulfill Faruq Ahmads desire
to be buried in the compound of Hujwiris shrine, and an
alternative location was hastily arranged. As the burial was
about to commence, however, a stranger suddenly arrived
and announced that he would provide a plot within the
mazar (Rozehnal 2007, 656).
The grave of Faruq Ahmed still exists within the Shrine
complex. Since I spent most of my time in the adjacent
office, it was with great pride (and no doubt a hope for
my conversion) that I was repeatedly told the story of the
Englishman converting to Islam because of Data Sahib.
Apart from the oddity of his home country, Ahmed
Faruqs local fame has another basis, since, as is the case
for most real saints, his story did not end with his death.
When construction work on the new complex required
the relocation of a number of graves, Ahmed Faruqs grave
was among them. When the workers opened the almost
40-year-old grave, however, they found that the body was
still intact. As Rozehnal points out, this commonly known
story is of course impossible to be validated today. However,

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MANAGING PIETY

Ahmed Faruqs grave is one of very few graves that were

not moved and instead a room was constructed around it
(Rozehnal 2007, 66).
Returning to the historiographical evidence of Hujwiris
evolution as a figure of national importance, after Dara
Shikoh, the next key figure for this development was
Pakistans national poet Muhammad Iqbal. Firstly, he
further associated a sober Sufism with Hujwiri contrasting
him to the present-day (early-twentieth century) pirs and
caretakers of the shrines, in whom Iqbal (alongside many of
the colonial officers and orientalists) saw a class of ruthless
exploiters of the rural masses. This stance on the class of
the traditional caretakers of the shrines has secondly led to
a book called Ideology of Pakistan written by his son, Javid
Iqbal in 1958 (2005), which gave the impulse to establish a
state department for the takeover of shrines in 1960. While
being critical of Sufi practices and shrines, Muhammad
Iqbal also had great affection for Sufism in general and
Hujwiris and Rumis17 works in particular. Iqbal is said
to have visited the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh regularly
especially in his later years and [] contemporary tradition
says that the idea of a separate state for Muslims in the
subcontinent actually occurred to Muhammad Iqbal in
Data Darbar (Goulding 1925, 2; in Suvorova 2004, 55).
Iqbal follows a dichotomy between early righteous Sufis
and present-day corrupt pirs that was established within
the colonial discourse on Islam (see earlier citation from
Ewing 1997, 47).18

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63

While Orientalists like Nicholson valued the classical texts

of the Sufis, for the colonial encounter it was necessary to
show Islams inferiority to Christianity. An example of what
the discourse on shrines, Islam and Christianity was like
during the colonial period is found in an article by Flora
Davidson from 1946:
It goes to ones heart to see poor women who have trudged
wearily miles and miles, with an ailing and perhaps dying baby
in their arms, prostrating themselves at one of these shrines.
They mutter long prayers, brush themselves down, present
little oil lamps or a bit of cloth or food, at the grave of whoknows-who, while the living Christ, the great Healer, His
heart throbbing with love and compassion, stands by unknown
and unrecognized. Islam, a religion founded on a Prophet now
dead and buried, on obsolete laws, sterile precepts, customs
and practices of the Dark Ages, maintains and even fosters
a belief in superstitions and the efficacy of graves and dead
mens bones. (Davidson 1946, in Ewing 1997, 412).

The dichotomy between the grave of who-knows-who,

the Prophet now dead and buried, the obsolete laws,
practices of the Dark Ages and a belief in superstition on
the one hand and the the living Christ, the great Healer,
the love and compassion on the other hand is, to put it
simply, that between the traditional East and the modern
West.19 Iqbals description of present-day Sufism closely
resembles that of Davidsons: The masses of Islam were
swayed by the kind of mysticism which blinked actualities,
enervated the people and kept them steeped in all kinds
of superstition. From its high state as a force of spiritual
education, mysticism had fallen down to a mere means

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MANAGING PIETY

of exploiting the ignorance and credulity of the people

(Muhammad Iqbal quoted in Javid Iqbal (2005), 478).
The difference is that Iqbal contrasts the deteriorated
state of Sufism not to Christianity but to the Sufism that
was once a high state as a force of spiritual education.
The explanation of how it had come so far, was for both
the orientalists and Iqbal the institutionalization of the
pirmuridi (master-disciple) relationship from the eleventh
century onwards, in the cause of which also the first
brotherhoods or orders (silsilas) were established. How
negative this process was seen by the orientalist scholars
can be seen in Trimminghams classical study of Sufism,
The Sufi Orders of Islam (1971), which summarizes the
different historical stages of Sufism as first the surrender to
God associated with a golden age of Sufism, second, the
surrender to a rule and finally the surrender to a person
(Ewing 1997, 48). A core portion of Hujwiris positive
image for Iqbal can therefore be found in the fact that
Hujwiri lived in a time when this process was yet to take
place and he is therefore seen as a representative of this
golden age. While Hujwiris work is only mentioned as a
source in Iqbals doctoral thesis about the Development of
Metaphysics in Persia (1908/2001), he later wrote about him
in the poem Asrar-i-Khudi (Secrets of the self ):
The saint of Hujwir was venerated by the peoples,
and Pir-i Sanjar20 visited his tomb as a pilgrim.
With ease he broke down the mountain barriers
And sowed the seed of Islam in India.
The age of Omar was restored by his godliness,

The Perfect Saint

65

The fame of Truth was exalted by his words.

He was a guardian of the honour of the Quran,
the house of Falsehood fell in ruins at his gaze.
The dust of the Punjab was brought to life by his breath,
Our dawn was made splendid by his sun.
He was a lover, and withal a courier of Love:
The secrets of Love shone forth from his brow.
I will tell a story of his perfection
and enclose a whole rose-bed in a single bud.
(Iqbal 1929, 96)
Iqbal starts with the reference to Moinuddin Chishti,
who at this time already was the most venerated Saint of
the subcontinent thus turning his visit to the Shrine into
something of an accolade for Hujwiri. The next four lines
refer to the commonly accepted view that it was Hujwiri
who brought Islam to the subcontinent and with it an age
of justice (the second Caliph Omar (also spelled Umar)) is
viewed by many Muslims as the perfect ruler ([Link]
2004, 56)). Next, Iqbal refers to Hujwiri as a guardian
of the Quran emphasizing his compatibility with formal
Islam and in the next line gives him the credit to have
made the house of Falsehood fall in ruins, referring to
those pretenders of Sufism of whom Hujwiri writes about
so critically. The last line of interest here is The dust of
the Punjab was brought to life by his breath which is a
reference to the dust of the graves of the numerous Punjabi
saints (Suvorova 2004, 56). How strong these images of
Hujwiri are anchored in common perceptions on the street
can be seen by one of the most widespread stories told

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MANAGING PIETY

about the Saint. Retold and combined with the personal

story of a farmer, it can be found, e.g. in Samina Quraeshis
Sacred Spaces: a journey with the Sufis of the Indus:
I met a farmer at Sahibs shrine who told me he was there to
ask that his cows produce thick, pure milk. There was a blight
in his village, he explained, that was making his cows listless
and unproductive. I asked him how Data Sahib could help his
cows, since he really dealt with guiding visitors to the divine.
He answered me with a Hujwiri story about the Turkish emirs
of Ghazni, who entered the subcontinent in the eleventh
century and made Lahore part of the Ghaznavid Empire.
The governor (in most stories called the naibviceroy) of
Lahore was Rai Raju, a well-known Hindu yogi. The people
of Lahore revered him and supplied him with large quantities
of milk as homage. Once a woman carrying a pot of milk
passed by Hujwiri. When he asked her if she could give him
some, she refused, saying it was meant for Rai Raju (here
most people add that the women said that if she gave milk
to anyone else, her cows would only give blood in the future).
Hujwiri told her that if she gave him some milk, her cow
would begin to produce in greater abundance. She complied,
and from then on her cows udders were always full. Soon this
news spread all over Lahore and people flocked to Hujwiri,
and because of their encounter with him they converted, by
the thousands, to Islam. Rai Raju, curious and infuriated by
Hujwiri, sent his emissaries to see what the newcomer was all
about. None of them returned (having converted to Islam at
the feet of Hujwiri instead). Finally, he went and confronted
Hujwiri himself, asking him to conjure up a miracle. Hujwiri
replied, I am not a juggler. Rai Raju began flying in the air,
but Hujwiri ordered his shoes to bring him down. Rai Rajus
shoes flew off and struck Rai Raju on his head, bringing him

The Perfect Saint

67

back to earth. Impressed and inspired by Hujwiri, he became

his devotee, accepted Islam, and changed his name to Shaikh
Ahmad Hindi. (Quraeshi et al. 2010; 135, 138)

What is striking about the story is that Hujwiri is portrayed

as having done miracles only in reply to either an unjust
ruler or as a reaction to another miracle done out of lower
intentions. This goes well with his image as a rational, yet
powerful Sufi, using his powers not to impose on others but
only to help the needy or unmask the pretentious. Returning
to Iqbals poem, another important factor in Hujwiris
popularity can be identified. In the line And sowed the seed
of Islam in India as has already been mentioned, Hujwiri is
given responsibility for opening the subcontinent to Islam.
The background of this view is not only the idea expressed
by Dara Shikoh of Hujwiri being responsible for all of
the subcontinent and subsequent Sufi masters having to
ask him for spiritual permission (seecitation above, Dara
Shikoh 1965,149; cited in Suvorova 2004, 55). There is also
a strong connection made between Ali Hujwiris arrival to
Lahore and the start of an age of Muslim rule in South
Asia starting with the Ghaznavids and ending with the
Moguls.
While the conversion of Hindus to Islam in Lahore and
the region around it was a process taking place over more
than a millennium, from the beginning of Arab influence
in Multan in the eighth century to the conversions during
British rule in the nineteenth and twentieth century, in
the mind of many Lahoris and Pakistanis it was Hujwiri
himself who converted the city to Islam within the few

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MANAGING PIETY

decades he resided in Lahore and this is a major reason

why many visit his Shrine who otherwise condemn the
veneration of saints.
Hujwiri thus has become over the centuries much more than
just a Sufi saint and writer, but is seen (and reproduced)
almost as a mythological national hero associated closely
with the first Islamization of South Asia. Having lived
within in the very small historical time frame between the
arrival of Islam in the subcontinent and the establishment of
Sufi orders, Hujwiri is one of the only saints in South Asia
who can easily be connected to the golden age of Sufism as
it was seen by the orientalist scholars and western educated
elite during colonial and postcolonial period. The fact that
he is not associated with any particular order has had the
additional effect that there are no religious authorities that
can claim to represent his views and teachings, making it
easy for anyone to appropriate him for themselves. Thus in
various of my interviews or informal conversations people
would project into Ali Hujwiri whatever suited their views.
For the more educated elite and Islamic reformers he was
foremost a scholar of Islam, and a very pious Muslim.
For others he was a spiritual guide through his writings
and others see him as a living pir, who appears in dreams
and grants wishes for baby boys. The most extreme point
in this ubiquitous appropriation was a member of the
communist wing of the Pakistan Peoples Party, whom I met
occasionally. Asking him about Data Sahib, he told me that
he was one of the first communists, striving for an equal

The Perfect Saint

69

division of wealth and giving to the poor what he gained

from the rich.21
Being at last, such an unproblematic Saint in terms of his
ecumenical approach to diverse and at various times hotly
debated topics within Sufism and Islam, it is now clear
that one could hardly find a better saint for the political
elite to identify with. That he is a space to accommodate
everybody will become even more evident in the following
chapters, where we look at the process in which the Shrine
of Data Ganj Bakhsh was transformed from one shrine
among many into the countrys largest and most complex
sacred site. Within this process Hujwiri has become almost
a trademark. The name Hujwiri is used for almost anything,
from a former airline to uncountable shops, products,
schools, publishers or government institutions. He is also
among those figures that are prominently displayed in
school books, where his story is told as that of a very pious
Muslim coming to Lahore to preach Islam.

Making Data Darbar Modern

3.1 A Short History of Data Darbar

Arguably South Asias largest Muslim shrine and given

the fact the historians have taken great interest in the
development of waqf properties and shrines in both Central
and South Asia, one would expect there to be historical
studies concerned with Data Darbar. Unfortunately this
is not the case and there are good reasons why. First and
foremost, studies like The Shrine and Cult of Muin al-din
Chishti of Ajmer by P. M. Currie (2006) or Waqf in Central
Asia: four hundred years in the history of a Muslim shrine,
14801889 by R. D. Mcchesney (1991) have dealt with
shrines that were at various times closely connected to the
local rulers and thus have made it into official records, e.g.
giving information about donations made to the waqf or
changes made under certain rulers, e.g. Akbar in the case
of Ajmer Sharif. This is, with very few exceptions, not the
case at Data Darbar. The reason he is mentioned by Dara
Shikoh is primarily for the Kashf al-Mahjub, and thus there
is no comprehensive description of his shrine. The only
reference to the Shrine that I could find was a script roll
in the private collection of the Fakir Khana Museum in
Lahore from Ranjit Singhs time indicating that the Shrine

Making Data Darbar Modern

71

did receive donations at the time (early-nineteenth century).

There are no other primary sources available (today) from
the official records. Another resource, e.g. for Curries study
have been the brotherhoods own records, also absent in the
case of Data Darbar. We thus rely solely on reconstructions
by local historians, that will be presented shortly. Given the
lack of direct information about the Shrine up until after
independence I include in this chapter a small history of
the development of Lahore in relation to the Shrine until
1960, when it was nationalized.
With independence major changes to the Shrine took
place, which can roughly be divided into four phases. First
the city itself saw a rapid growth of its Muslim population
after independence. In a second phase the Shrine was
nationalized in 1960 and slowly became appropriated
by the political elite, especially under Bhutto and later
under Zia ulHaq. The third phase was its architectural
modernization, enlarging the Shrine to six times its size
between the early 1980s and the late 1990s. During this
time the Shrine again saw a growth in visitors and became a
financial success for the Auqaf Department, the department
under which the nationalized shrines were run. In the last
phase, the time since the completion of the new complex
in 1999, the Shrines importance has reached new levels
and has become not only a national monument but also
a much more social place in the sense that various actors
from private to civil society to state agencies contribute
with various social welfare activities. As part of this process
it has also become a contested place, culminating in a 2010

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MANAGING PIETY

twin suicide attack on the Shrine. Both these dimensions

of the Shrines recent development will be dealt with in
separate chapters.
In the coming section of this chapter I will look at the
history up until nationalization, then the colonial history
of the institution of waqf and the zeitgeist of the postindependence era that brought with it the establishment
of the Auqaf Department and the nationalization of the
Shrine. The next two sections will then deal with the
growth of the number of visitors and the architectural
modernization.
3.1.1The Shrine and its Relation to Lahore from
1073 to 1960

The first description of both Data Darbars history and

its then current state is the work by Noor Ahmed Chishti
from 1867 mentioned earlier. Other works that give
additional information are a biography by Muhammad
Din Fauq (2002) (cf. Shahzad 2010, 129) and Latif s
Lahore: Architectural Remains (Latif 1981) which is the
only work that, besides repeating the historical facts,
also gives a description of some of the rituals taking place
at the time (late-nineteenth century). Both Chishti and
Fauq report that the original shrine was constructed at
the site of Hujwiris hujra (residence) and mosque by
Sultan Ibrahim, the Ghaznavid ruler and great grandson
of Mahmud of Ghaznavi in the 1080s (Shahzad 2010,
137). According to Fauq (Ibid., 137) a platform, paved
walkway and a marbled door were added to the Shrine

Making Data Darbar Modern

73

under Akbars time (mid-sixteenth century to 1605). The

next changes to the Shrine came during Ranjit Singhs
time when an octagonal wooden cage was constructed
around the Shrine, covered with a roof made from timber
(Ibid., 138). At the time of Chishtis writing, this roof had
recently (1862) been turned into a brick dome painted
green and a new mosque was built resembling the great
Badshahi mosque that lies 1km north of the Shrine.
Chishti writes about the mosque: After that, (Hadrat Ali
Hujwiri) settled at the place where later on the shrine and
a mosque at his own expense were constructed. At the
same place, the mosque still exists and now in 1279 ah
(ad 1862), a person named Ghulzar Shah has reconstructed
the mosque at the same place through Noor Muhammad
Sadhoo (Chishti 1867, 166 in Shahzad 2010, 1401).
The mosque was built in brick but later plastered and
painted white. The earliest pictures of the Shrine and
mosque available are a drawing in Latif (1981) (Fig. 3),
a photograph from 1928 (Subhan 1960) (Fig. 4) and a
painting by Miran Bakhsh Moortan from 1944, most
likely depicting a historical and idealized image (Shahzad
2004) (Fig. 5). From Latif we know that the Saint was
held in the greatest veneration by all classes of people and
was attended by both Mohammedans and Hindus (Latif
1981, 180). Between 1862 and the time of independence
occasional repairs were made but no major architectural
changes (Ibid., 182). It was in the last decades of this time
however, that the Shrine became encompassed by the city,
a process that had far-reaching consequences.

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MANAGING PIETY

Hujwiri had lived on the bank of the River Ravi opposite

to the city and, when he died, was buried there. There
are diverse stories circulating of why he did not establish
himself within the city. The most common story is that
he arrived in Lahore during the night and the gates were
already closed (this seems highly improbable given that even
if he had stayed outside for the night, he would not have
moved across the river and settled there for good). Another
story says that he despised the local Hindu population and
Lahore at first and therefore chose the natural barrier of
the river to distance himself from the city. Given a tradition
among Sufis to go into the wilderness and settle for large
parts of their lives in between settlements (cf. Werth 1998),
this could also have been a reason for Hujwiri not to live in
the city. However, he himself does not refer to this practice
in the Kashf al-Mahjub and it is therefore most likely that
it was his discontent with the city itself that made him
stay outside it. Even though the river was later caused to
change its course by an embankment, at this time (around
the seventeenth century) a wall had long been constructed
encircling Lahore, thus leaving the Shrine outside it. When
the city came under British rule in 1849 the area next to
the Shrine was used for a short period of time as a tent city
but left again when the British established their residential
areas to the south and south-east of the walled city. For
most of the British reign the Shrine remained outside
the city. Lahore started growing rapidly when it became
an important part of the British railway system but grew
largely to the south-east, later to the east and north and last
to the west, where the river and the Shrine were situated.

Making Data Darbar Modern

75

Thus in a map from 1920 (see Fig.6) the Shrine was still
not part of the city. Within this time frame fall the first
translations of the Kashf al-Mahjub into both Urdu and
English, possibly giving the saint a more prominent standing
since few people would have been able to read Persian.
Although the Shrine can be considered to have been
popular throughout the centuries, it was considered one
among many and little attention was paid to it by writers
during the British period (the Gazetteers mention it but
leave it uncommented (cf. Walker 2006)). In a British map
from 1909 the Shrine is not shown, but other shrines are,
e.g. the shrines of Bibi Pakdamman, Shah Jamal and Mian
Mir. On the 1920 map it is shown, which could indicate
that the Shrine had become more important or possibly
just being an outcome of Nicholsons 1911 translation of
the Kashf al-Mahjub, making Hujwiri better known among
the British.
With independence and the rapid growth of the citys
Muslim population, important changes happened to the
Shrine. From an estimated population of 150,000 in 1893,
the city grew to 671,659 by 1941 and almost double this
size in 1961 (1,296,477) (Mauldin 1963, 66). Assuming
that before Partition the Muslim population was around
60 per cent and after Partition around 90 per cent, the
actual increase of Muslims in Lahore was nearly 400 per
cent in these twenty years.22 Many of the Indian refugees
settled in the newly established residential areas around
Data Darbar, today called Bilal Ganj, part of the Data
Ganj Bakhsh Town, a part of Lahore named by reference

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MANAGING PIETY

to the Saint.23 For these Muslims, the Shrine of Data Ganj

Bakhsh must have had a great appeal given its openness to
all sects because of its non-association with a particular
Sufi order. Thus when the Shrine was taken over by the
newly established Auqaf Department, a process of growing
importance of the Shrine had already begun. This was taken
to a new level however, when the Shrine was appropriated
by the political elite in the decades that followed.
3.1.2Independence, State Control and
Modernization
[Link] Nationalization and its Political Context

The nationalization of Data Darbar has had a fundamental

impact on every dimension of the Shrine, from the rituals
performed to the money involved, from the architecture
of the Shrine to the development of its surroundings.
Before turning to the development of the Shrine after its
nationalization I will first briefly outline why Pakistani
shrines were nationalized.
For Muslims a shrine constitutes what is called a waqf
(pl. auqaf), an inalienable endowment. There is no
mentioning of the concept in the Quran, instead it is based
on a famous Hadith (saying about the Prophet [pbuh]):
Umar (later to become the second caliph) had gained land
after the conquest of the oasis of Khaibar and asked the
Prophet about how to make best use of it. The Messenger
of God told Umar to tie up (one of the basic meanings
of the verb waqafa) the land and gardens and devote any

Making Data Darbar Modern

77

income to the welfare of the faithful (Kozlowski 1985, 10).

Kozlowski points out, that the newly established institution
of the endowment filled a certain gap in the practices of
the Prophets (pbuh) community. Most of the first Muslims
were merchants dealing with movable and easily divisible
goods. Thus they knew how to deal with such goods and
in case of booty, divided it among them. With immovable
property such as houses and land this practice had its limits
and there seems to have been some uncertainty among
the companions of how to deal with it, that was addressed
by the waqf (Ibid., 1985, 10). Over the centuries waqf
has become an important instrument to protect private
property from being split-up through inheritance. Waqf
also became a major institution for social welfare and
community services in Islam that have included not only
mosques and shrines but also hospitals, schools and roads.
Waqf is therefore considered a paramount institution of civil
society in Muslim countries (cf. White 2006, Kuran 2001).
Today waqf properties are often divided into those which
are bequeathed by a Muslim to cater for his family when
he has died (waqf dhurri/ahli), or which are bequeathed
for the public good (waqf khayri). Often however, both
was the case.24 Many shrines became auqaf when the
Sufi brotherhoods were established. For the brotherhoods
the legal form of waqf was appropriate to deal with the
donations made to the saints, which often consisted of both
movable goods as well as immovable property (Kozlowski
1985, 19). For many shrines no official waqf document
exists, but the larger shrines are considered waqf dedicated

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MANAGING PIETY

to the public. A waqf has specific requirements regarding

the founder, the beneficiaries and its administration
and is supposed to last forever. However, under certain
circumstances a waqf can be terminated, e.g. when the
goods of the waqf are not used in the manner intended by
the founder or if the waqf is used for purposes forbidden by
the Quran. This has given various governments in Muslim
countries a justification for nationalizing auqaf, as was the
case in Pakistan beginning in 1960 (cf. Shatzmiller 2001,
Malik 1996).
To understand why the shrines were nationalized at this
point in time, it is necessary to look at the history of the
institution of waqf under British rule and secondly the
specific zeitgeist of the post-independence era.
In the first years of British rule the waqf was largely left
untouched by colonial regulations. This changed when in
the nineteenth century court cases emerged that included
waqf land (Kozlowski 1985, 96). For the British judges it
was clear that any case that included waqf land (or in fact
any case that included a word of Arabic origin) needed to
be dealt with under what was considered Muhammadan
law. This law was based on the sharia and in fact what
had been a customary law (or more precise, the path to the
water/spring interpreted as the right path of life), highly
flexible and with great geographical and social diversity, was
now slowly turned into a legal system under British rule. In
the process a law of waqf emerged (cf. Kozlowski 198525).

Making Data Darbar Modern

79

Most of the cases dealing with auqaf property where

essentially disputes over the succession of the mutawalli, the
trustee of the endowment, a post that not only gave a salary
but also a great deal of power over the waqf s finances.
Some of the cases however were also about whether or not
the property at hand was a waqf at all. Thus in an important
case from Bombay,26 the lawyers of one side argued that
the property in case was not a waqf using a definition
of waqf from a translation of the Hedayah by Charles
Hamilton. The Hedaya is one of the most important legal
works of the Hanaf i school written by Burhan-ud-din
alMarghinani (ad11521197). Hamilton did not translate
it from the original Arabic version but instead from the
Persian translation. While the original work presented
different views on the question of what constitutes a waqf,
Hamiltons unease with this common stylistic element of
Muslim writers of the era (cf. the Kashf al-Mahjub) led
him to simply choose what fitted most his own views on
the matter, thus overriding a century-long perception of
waqf as having both private as well as charitable objects.
Although the argument did not play a role in the case, one
of the judges of the High Court of Bombay, Justice West,
thought of it as a highly important and nice question,
one that he answered in another case in 1882, making use
of Hamiltons definition: a waqf in favour of its founders
family was valid, so long as the dedication made it clear that
the poor or some other charitable or public purpose
would ultimately get the income (Ibid.,137).

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Another case in which property as part of a waqf was to

be sold, made it all the way to the Privy Council in 1889
and the ruling was similar to Wests. In this case it was
stated by Lord Hobhouse on behalf of the counsel that
the waqf was an illusory religious endowment because
only a small fraction of the income from the waqf was
spent on charitable objects, such as schools and mosques
(Ibid., 138). In the coming years cases all over India were
decided in similar fashion, sometimes even by Muslim
judges who themselves thought critical of the private waqf.
While the arguments were often based on the principle
that the private waqf was not mentioned in the Quran and
that what was mentioned in the Hadith was concerned
with waqf that would ultimately have charitable objects,
the reason for the British judges to apply these arguments
and not others (of which there would have been enough if
one had looked for them) was more likely a fear of large
amounts of property escaping their control.
When more and more judges in favour of the private waqf
(among them many Muslims) realized that an overruling
of the Privy Councils decision on auqaf was unlikely, the
matter was instead taken up politically. A first attempt to
establish a law on private waqf was made in the 1870
1880s by Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan whose argument was
largely based on the fact that rich Muslim families needed
the institution of waqf in order to avoid the splitting of
their properties through Islamic inheritance rules. Even
though this argument was supposed to win over the
minds of the British administration because of their close

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81

relations with these families, the fear of social turmoil and

a restrictive policy towards mingling with Muhammadan
law eventually made Sayyid withdraw his proposal upon
advice from his friends in the administration (Ibid., 157
62). Thirty years later, after the Privy Councils decision and
after the Minto-Morley reforms of 1909 (correctly The
Indian Councils Act), a young and little known lawyer by
the name of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, saw in the question
the opportunity to make a name for himself. Taught in
England and well versed in the British system, Jinnah used
the newly established form of the question to raise the
topic in the Imperial Legislative Council in February 1910:
Are the government aware that there is a strong feeling
prevailing amongst the Muhammadans against the present
state of the system of the waqf law as expounded by the
recent decisions of the Privy Council affecting in particular
the system of waqf aala ad awlaud (private waqf )? (Cited
in Ibid., 179). Jinnah received a reply in which it was stated
that no legislative action to overturn the Privy Councils
decision would be taken except if there was unity among
the Muslim community on this matter. Confidently, Jinnah
presented his Mussalman Wakf Validating Act on 17 March
1911, as a private members bill to the council in order to
restore the private ownership of auqaf (Ibid., 180). It took
until 1913 for the act to finally pass, however, only for
newly established auqaf (Malik 1996, 56). In 1930 however,
pre-1913 auqaf were also included in the act.
The Mussalman Wakf Validating Act only concerned private
auqaf and thus did not have an influence on the shrines

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directly. However, the clear distinction between a private

waqf and a public one was now made, and it was this
distinction that played a role in the nationalization of
the shrines. While it was now acceptable that a Muslim
established a waqf for his family as a private waqf, it
was also clear that all other auqaf were solely charitable.
Thus when Ayub Khans government nationalized auqaf
properties under the Auqaf Ordinance of 1960 they were
careful enough to exclude the private auqaf as defined by
Jinnahs bill from 1913. This meant that on the one hand,
they did not opose the Father of the Nation Jinnah, leaving
his achievements intact. On the other hand, it meant that
all non-private auqaf (including the shrines) that where not
solely charitable could validly be taken into state hands.
The Auqaf Ordinance of 1960 came at a time when Pakistan
was still a young state. As has been pointed out, it was still
struggling for a common identity, one in which Islam had to
play a role, while at the same time religion was seen as both
a potential obstacle to modernization as well as possible
fuel for separatist movements. Ayub Khan therefore sent
out a questionnaire to the countrys intellectuals in 1958
about what the ideology of Pakistan should be. A copy was
also sent to Javid Iqbal, the son of Muhammad Iqbal. Javid
wrote a whole book on the subject, first published in 1959
with a foreword by Ayub Khan himself (Iqbal 2005, 7).
The book, simply entitled Ideology of Pakistan, was based to
some extent on Javids fathers ideas, a fact that gave it the
necessary authority to talk on such a broad and important
topic. As we have seen, Muhammad Iqbal was very critical

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of the practices around and inside the many Pakistani

shrines, while also having great respect for the original
Sufis. Javid Iqbal added to this criticism the tone of the
1950s and 1960s strife for modernity when he suggested
the nationalization of all the auqaf in Pakistan:
The Ministry of Religious Affairs, Ideological Orientation or
Awqaf should take into possession all the Muslim religious
endowments (awqaf ) in Pakistan and appoint administrators
to manage them. [] There is no denying the fact that the
mystical orders produced saints of a very high quality in the
world of Islam. At one time these monasteries (Khanqahs,
etc.) were the centres of attraction for the Learned. But now
their condition is very deplorable indeed. They have been
transformed into centres of moral and religious corruption.
[] Thus it is high time that the Mutawallis, Mujawars,
Sahibzadas, Gaddi-Nishins, Sajjada-Nishins, Pirs etc.,
connected with the monasteries or the tombs of the saints, and
in many cases thrive on feudalism (jagirdari), should either be
reformed or removed from their self-created spiritual offices.
The establishment of such a Ministry on the lines suggested
above is the only remedy for the paralysing influence of the
Mullah and the Pir over the rural masses of Islam. Unless and
until the Mullah and the Pir are excluded from our religious
life, there is no likelihood of the successful dissemination of
enlightenment, liberalism and a meaningful and vital faith
among the people of Pakistan. (Iqbal 2005, 478)

Ayub Khan received the book with great enthusiasm, stating

in a letter to Javid Iqbal: I congratulate you on producing
this excellent document. My own mind is also working on
the lines on which you have based your thesis (Ibid., back

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cover). The language of Iqbal is revealing, giving a clear idea

of how he and Ayub Khan viewed the traditional caretakers
and religious authorities, positioning them on one side of
the dichotomy between tradition and modernity, the latter
understood largely in western terms, including a secular
state and an enlightened and active public, both of which
seemed to contrast sharply with rural Pakistani reality.
Given that the Auqaf Ordinance of 1960 was established
shortly after Ayub Khan took power and only a year after
the publication of the book, we can assume that he had
more in mind with it than the vital faith among the people
of Pakistan. However, Iqbals arguments were useful as a
justification for a much more political move. Being well
aware of the political power of the shrine holders, taking
over shrines was at the same time a way of expanding the
states influence over madrasas and mosques, as well as
weakening the traditional class of pirs, sajjada nishins and
muttawalis (cf. Malik 1996, 55; Ewing 1997, 70). As a
result of the nationalization, the financial resources of the
shrines now also came under state control. This became a
major factor in deciding which shrines were taken over, for
generally only those shrines were nationalized that made a
surplus (Malik 1996, 60).
The nationalization of the shrines naturally faced criticism
and many of the former caretakers did not give up their
main asset of livelihood easily. One reaction was the
establishment of organizations by the sajjada nishins who
then fought legal battles all the way to the Supreme Court
(Ibid., 1997, 645). In most cases there was little to do

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85

however and other forms of income needed to be found,

which in the case of Data Darbar for example was the
running of shops catering for the visitors in the surrounding
of the Shrine. At shrines where the sajjada nishins or
muttawallis managed to maintain a good relationship with
the new administration, a monthly scholarship is sometimes
paid by the Auqaf Department, in the case of Data Darbar
it is in the scale of 0.3 per cent of the total expenditure or
0.05 per cent of the income of the Shrine.
Criticism of the nationalization also influenced public
opinion, given that many of the ulama, pirs and sajjada
nishins were highly respected and influential figures. When
it came to weakening the shrine holders more needed to
be done than to simply deprive them of their income.
Many pirs were still making an income from providing
guidance, selling amulets and other spiritual services.
Alongside nationalization it was therefore necessary to
establish alternatives to these services at the shrines, and
to highlight the obsolete nature of the pirs as mediators
between common man and woman and God:
In the context of nationalization of religious endowments, an
attempt was made, both under Ayub and later under Bhutto,
to reduce the traditional religious authority of the shrine
holders, by formally propagating an emancipation of the
visitors to the shrines. In order to do so, it was necessary to
play down the shrine or at least to represent it as a worldly
institution and thus to take away its religious character. Up
to this stage the ordinary murid had no direct access to God.
The saint was a mediator. [] This meditating role was now

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supposed to be rendered superfluous through the activities of

the Auqaf Department. From now on every citizen, provided
only that he was a good Muslim, was supposed to be able
to enter directly into dialogue with God. Thus the saints or
shrine holders acquired more mundane features and their
annual feasts (arabic urs literally marriage, i.e. the union
with God) became public holidays and were consequently
secularized. The miraculous healing power of the saints was
replaced by the building of hospitals in the endowments.
(Malik 1996, 61)

It also became common practice to rewrite the biographies

of the saints whose shrines where now in state control. This
was done through speeches held at the shrines by officials
or pamphlets and brochures printed and distributed at the
shrines. Newspapers took up the practice as can be seen
in this vivid example from the Pakistan Times of how Ali
Hujwiri was viewed during Bhuttos time: He [Data Ganj
Bakhsh] preached egalitarianism and visualized a classless
society based on the concept of Musawat-i-Muhammadi
which Allama Iqbal and Quaid-i-Azam later termed
as Islamic Socialism (Shibli 1974, quoted from Ewing
1997, 72). This example illustrates the earlier point of the
appropriation of Ali Hujwiri as a national identification
figure. Written during the peak of Zulfikar Ali Bhuttos
popularity, the prime minister and his Islamic Socialism
are put at the top of a genealogy of the countrys most
eminent thinkers and their understanding of national unity.
In line with promoting the unifying character of Islam,
celebrations at the shrines were announced as national

Making Data Darbar Modern

87

rather than regional festivities and sometimes even made

public holidays (Ewing 1997, 74).
Another focus of the newly established Auqaf Department
were the buildings themselves, in order to show improvement
from the way they were being run by the earlier caretakers.
As we will see in detail in the next chapters, this often
meant architectural changes, but also that new buildings
were added to the shrines to accommodate such institutions
as libraries, medical dispensaries or the hospitals mentioned
earlier. Because the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh has been
expanded in this regard to an extent unprecedented in
Pakistan, I will later deal with these institutions separately.
In 1961, the first changes were made to the Waqf
Ordinance, and other changes followed all of which further
strengthened the position of the Administrator Auqaf, a
position that did not require any Islamic education and
yet formally was the administrator of several hundred
of shrines. The Auqaf Department was a provincial
department at first, until Bhutto put the administration of
the auqaf under federal government control in 1976, before
Zia ulHaq returned it to the provincial administration
only three years later (Malik 1996, 623).
[Link] Early Years of State Control, 19601979

At the time when Data Darbar came under state control

in 1960 it had seen an increase in visitors from the time
of independence. The administration quickly realized that
the Shrine needed more space to accommodate the visitors.

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The department reacted at first by demolishing a number

of smaller buildings inside the Shrine courtyard to make
more space. The communal kitchen had previously been
moved to a road east of the Shrine. A general problem of
the Shrine was that there was little protection from sun and
rain, given that the mosque itself could only provide shelter
for a small part of the visitors. To show the departments
will of making improvements to the Shrine a veranda
(ghulam gardish) was built around the octagonal shrine itself
and added ten feet of roof to it, thus establishing a sheltered
area for visitors (Shahzad 2010, 144). The ghulam gardish
consisted of concrete columns, clad with marble carrying a
flat roof. The walls of the Shrine were also clad in marble
to give a consistent look to the architecture (Ibid., 1445).
In the early seventies, the ghulam gardish was extended with
another row of columns to give another ten feet of space
(Fig. 7). The earlier mentioned chilla gah of Moinuddin
Chishti was now part of the ghulam gardish and this part
of the Shrine has remained largely unchanged until today.
The growing importance of the Shrine for the city and
the countrys highest political figures of the time becomes
evident in the next architectural episode, the building of
the so-called golden gate. In an interview with Muhammad
Shabbir Malik, later the Director General of the Auqaf
Department (one of the highest posts in the department),
he remembered how he had been a man in his twenties
when he met Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1974. Bhutto was to
inaugurate the golden gate and on the way to the Shrine
told his companions, among them Shabbir Malik, why

Making Data Darbar Modern

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he donated this gate to the Saint. Previous to becoming

President and later Prime Minister, Bhutto had as the
Foreign Minister visited Iran. When meeting the Shah,
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, he asked him for advice on
how he could gain power in Pakistan. The Shah told him
that he should go to the famous shrine of Imam Reza in
Teheran and pray for help as well as donate one golden gate
to the shrine. Bhutto answered that he would give three
golden gates should he succeed, one to Imam Reza, one
to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (another one of Pakistans most
important saints, situated in Sehwan, Sindh) and finally one
to Data Ganj Bakhsh. According to Shabbir Malik, Bhutto
also expressed his intention to expand the Shrine on that
occasion. Contrary to this view, the common perception is
that the golden gate was a gift from the Shah, Bhutto only
being the one inaugurating it. From the perspective of the
Auqaf Department however, only the gold work on the
external surface of door was done by Iranian craftsmen and
expenses was met by Auqaf Department [sic] (Shahzad
2010, 147). In the years following the inauguration of the
golden gate, a number of smaller projects inside the Shrine
complex were carried out, including the construction of
offices for the administration, a number of shops and some
flats as well as marble flooring in parts of the courtyard.
Apart from making architectural changes to the shrines,
another important step to improve the departments image
was the establishment of medical dispensaries at many of
the nationalized shrines. At Data Darbar this was done
immediately after the Shrine was taken over. Soon after

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its establishment, the dispensary was turned into a small

hospital for eye surgery, because of the availability and
willingness of an eye surgeon to work for the department.
Due to a lack of space inside the Shrine complex, cons
truction of a new building to hold the hospital was started
in 1962 on a piece of land that had once been given to the
Shrine as a donation and thus was part of the waqf. It is
situated about a 100 metres to the west of the Shrine. The
hospital started out with only an eye department, but was
constantly enlarged to contain more and more departments,
today being a fully fledged hospital.
The periods of Ayub Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto thus
saw a diversification of services offered at the Shrine by
the state and an improvement in its physical structure.
More importantly, however, was the discovery of shrines
as political stages. Ayub Khan and representatives of his
government had made appearances at shrines, but they
were restricted largely to the literary and social welfare
activities scheduled to occur in conjunction with the urs
(Ewing 1997, 75). For Ayub Khan the religious rituals were
apparently still a sphere that did not belong to the state.
Under Bhutto this changed, as Katherine Ewing writes:
The policy of Bhutto was to promote direct participation
in the urs by government officials: in his religious
ideology Bhutto placed less emphasis than Ayub Khan on
rationalization of Islam. Bhutto also wished to project an
image of himself as personally involved in the activities of
the common man, including shrine activities (Ibid.).

Making Data Darbar Modern

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If we conceive Data Darbar as a theatre, its stage in the

1970s knew two main plays: the government official laying
the chaddar (grave sheet) in the most important ritual
during the urs, and the public appearance of Bhutto, that
often included giving speeches and presenting himself as a
man of the people. This programme of the 1970s has since
remained almost unchanged as we will see in later chapters,
only the main actor has changed a number of times.
As has been pointed out several times, the appropriation of
this particular shrine was closely connected with the figure
and writing of Ali Hujwiri. It is therefore little surprising
that an emphasis on his person was also employed by the
Auqaf Department. As we will see, the policies started
under Ayub Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto were continued
in the decades to follow. With the enlargement of the
shrine in the 1980s and 1990s to almost six times the size it
was when it was taken over in 1960, the political dimension
of it reached new levels.
[Link] Modernizing Data Darbar27

In August 1976 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto officially expressed his

wish to expand the area of the Shrine to the Lower Mall
Road. By that time a construction committee had been in
place for four years working out a plan for a new mosque in
traditional style and later also a more modern design, both
of which were rejected however. The committee had been
further extended when the Lahore Development Authority
was established in 1975. As a result of Bhuttos wish,
the chairman of the committee, B. A. Kureshi, consulted

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several architects, most of whom advised him to declare

a national competition for the design. It took until late
February of 1978, when the competition was announced
in newspapers across Pakistan. The Auqaf Department in
the meantime had become a federal department and the
Chief of the Selection Committee was the President of
Pakistan. Of the twenty-seven proposals received, four were
shortlisted and handed to the committee by the Governor
of the Punjab heading a subcommittee. Since Zia ulHaq
was the final authority on selecting a design, he invited
all four teams of architects to his office and ordered them
to redraw their designs after having spent some hours
at the Shrine themselves.28 He chose the design by the
architects Naqvi and Siddique, finally approved with some
amendments in February 1980 (Shahzad 2010, 153). To get
a feeling of the hopes and later disappointments about the
competition, a short part of an interview done with one of
the participating architects is revealing:
When they decided to do this development (of a new
mosque), they announced a competition and the martial law
had just come in. And every time the martial law comes in
everybody thinks, now everything will be all right. Because
they are fed-up with the corruption, with the politicians.
They do nothing. Horrible! So thank God, they are gone!
Now we will have discipline, everything will be OK. So
everybody thought, this competition will be fair, the president
will be the chairman of the competition. And a lot of people
took part, some leading architects. So when it was put up (the
shortlisted designs on display) and the president Zia ulHaq
went around, he said: Rubbish!! These are all awful, my

Making Data Darbar Modern

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3-year-old daughter can do better than this! Then he called

all the architects to Islamabad and he said the front should
be like Shah Jahan Mosque in Thatta, very beautiful mosque,
and the inside should be like Wazir Khan Mosque and things
like that. So he said: Go and do some new designs. And so
people did some more designs and showed him and he said:
Rubbish, you guys cant do anything! And then he appointed
this architect from Islamabad. So you see it (the new design)
doesnt look like any of these mosques.
L: But I mean there must have been some reason why he picked
this design?
No. He picked the architect!29

In interviews with other architects that had submitted

designs, the story that Zia originally had asked for a
design resembling the large mosques of the country, all of
them built in Mogul Style, was generally repeated. The
suggestion made in the above interview that Zia did not in
fact choose the design but rather the architects, and then
left the design up to them is one I came across in a number
of interviews. However, the interest Zia showed in the
project would suggest that he would not have approved a
design simply because it came from someone he supported.
In an interview with one of the two architects responsible
for the design Q. A. Alavi also remembered the episode of
being called into the Presidents office and asked to redo
the design based on the three mosques mentioned. Instead
they stuck to their original design stating that even though
it had a modern touch it symbolically represented the old
architecture by being based on one of the classical elements

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of Islamic architecture, the arch.30 The mosque was to be an

arch unsupported in its centre thus establishing one large
prayer hall. This presented the architects with a problem of
having to cover the front of the mosque. According to Alavi,
after having seen the stained glasswork of the Blue Mosque
on a visit to Istanbul, it was clear to them that they wanted
to cover the open side of the mosque with a huge stained
glass window that would give protection to the prayer hall
while giving it an element of classical Islamic architecture.
In addition, the two minarets were done in a Turkish style
as requested by Zia when the design was resubmitted. We
can only speculate why Zia approved the design the second
time, but it might have been these elements that made the
difference. Zia was striving in his Islamization process for
an international Islam, showing the unity of the Islamic
nations. The new mosque would thus not represent a
specific South Asian architecture, symbolizing the diversity
of Islamic architecture and traditions, but instead the unity
of Islam, where architectural traditions from one part of the
Islamic world were used in a different part of the world.31
In the original design for the whole complex (Fig. 8), the
basement underneath the mosque was to hold a number of
shops. These were promised to some of the shop owners
whose shops were dismantled in the process of making
space for the construction. However, public pressure
ensured that the Governor of Punjab ordered the basement
to be used as part of the mosque. This was only the first
of a number of incidents that led to postponements of
construction. According to Malik Abdul Hamid, the

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director and general manager of the principal contractor for

construction, the main obstacle was the lack of space.32 The
old mosque was demolished in 1984 making space for the
new construction to take place on the entire western side
of the ghulam gardish.
Other factors in delaying the construction were the glass
window, the roof of the mosque and the gold-leafed tops
of the minarets which all proved to be more complicated to
create than originally imagined. The stained glass window
could not be made in Pakistan and it took over a year to
eventually find an Iraqi company that could do the job
with the help of a north Italian factory. The gold leafing
of the minarets tops was another major challenge that
was met by a London based contractor. The conical tops
were leafed on the ground and later transported to the top
of the minarets during which one worker died (a second
worker died when hit by a falling piece of steel later in the
construction process).
The construction was accompanied also by signs of the
spiritual power of the Saint. The story of Faruq Ahmed,
whose grave was opened and body showed no sign of
deterioration, has already been presented and there were
other similar incidents. One anecdote from the early years
of construction showing the Saints spiritual power is told
about the direction of the mosque.33 As the story goes,
Hujwiri was building his mosque when some Lahoris came
to him in anger, saying the mosques direction of qibla was
too far towards the south. When the mosque was finished
Hujwiri invited them to come and pray in the mosque and

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when they did, they suddenly saw the Kaaba just in front
of them. To make sure the direction of the new mosque was
right, the Department of Auqaf and Religious Affairs asked
both the National Air Force as well as the Astronomical
Department of the Punjab University to give the exact
bearing of the qibla for the site. The directions differed
from that of the mosque and it seemed at first that the
ancient story was wrong and Hujwiris mosque had indeed
faced too far towards the south. Since the mosque had
been rebuilt a number of times however, it was suggested
to check the right direction with the tomb instead, since
it most likely never changed its direction and was built in
line with Hujwiris original mosque. As it turned out, the
tombs direction was in fact slightly different than the old
mosque and much more in line with the measurements
done by the Air Force and the Astronomical Department.
It was therefore finally decided that the qibla of the new
Mosque would be oriented according to the tomb (Shahzad
2012, 1678).34
The construction of the mosque not only took almost a
decade, instead of the originally planned three years, it also
became more expensive than planned. By 1989, Benazir
Bhutto had become prime minister of Pakistan. In contrast
to her father as well as Zia ulHaq and the later Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif she had no personal relation to
the Saint. During her time as Head of State construction
basically came to a halt for nearly one and a half years
from 1989 to 1990. Apparently the project was largely seen
as Zias project and after his death in 1987 there seems

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to have been a reluctance, especially by Benazir Bhutto,

to continue the construction. As is stated several times
in a brochure by the Auqaf Department that was made
when the Mosque was finished, Nawaz Sharif, then chief
minister of Punjab, and owing his political career to Zia
ulHaq, played a major role in gaining financial resources
to continue the construction. Some of the funding came
from him personally, while the government of Punjab also
gave a loan to the Auqaf Department. When it comes to
the different attitudes towards the construction by Nawaz
Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, it is difficult to distinguish
between historical fact and later interpretation, especially
because of the involvement of Nawaz Sharif up until today.
At the time when the construction was continued in 1990,
it was decided that the second phase of the original design
should be started. It comprised the area between the
original shrine and the Lower Mall Road. Besides acquiring
funding, it was necessary to buy some of the land required
and to demolish an old colonial style school before the
work could start. Apart from the school, forty-four shops
were also demolished and the shopkeepers were promised
shops in the lower floor of the roof garden. When Nawaz
Sharif became prime minister the first time, he abandoned
this plan (although he himself had previously approved it)
and instead turned the area into a sama (mystical concerts)
hall, apparently in accordance with many followers of the
Saint who were displeased by the idea of having shops in
the complex. The shops had originally been envisioned
by the Auqaf Department to generate an income for the

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Shrine. During the early 1990s the donations at the Shrine

had increased, however, so that the potential income from
the shops could be neglected. During her second term in
office Benazir Bhutto reaffirmed the original design to
build shops and this was again abandoned during Nawaz
Sharif s second term as the prime minister, when the whole
complex was finished and inaugurated by him in May
1999. Besides the lower floor, the veranda around the roof
garden was also different to the original design, which led
to aggravation quarrel between the Auqaf Department and
the architects. The decision was made by the Construction
Committee during Nawaz Sharif s time in office, but it
is not clear whether he played a part in it.35 According
to Ghafer Shahzad, the main reason to close the complex
towards the road was to have a better control of the roof
garden.36
[Link]Public Opinion and Reactions to the
Modernization

What were the reactions by the people living in the area

and the visitors to the massive changes to the Shrine and its
surroundings between 1981 and 1999? Most commentators,
e.g. the leading architects in Lahore today, conservationists
as well as journalists I spoke with, were highly critical of
the expansion. First and foremost, it is viewed as part of
a time when Pakistans civil society was oppressed by an
authoritarian regime. The decisions made about the Shrine
were almost entirely done by Zia ulHaq himself. Secondly,
the architecture is criticized for its lack of reference to local

Making Data Darbar Modern

99

tradition or even the wider regions architectural history.

To get an idea of the kind of feelings associated with the
demolition of the old mosque and later the school, the
following part of an interview with an architect should be
sufficient:
Well, I think, probably most of the people who were unhappy,
were architects, conservationist, because this was a nice
victorian British colonial school, we were sad when they pulled
that down. (This was) a lovely British colonial-period mosque
and we were sad when they pulled that down.
L: Were there not any protests against this kind of (demolition), I
mean a mosque is not just some building?
Yeah, but you make another mosque and everyone is happy.
So I think most people are probably quite happy, there is a
bigger mosque, better facilities. [] But architects should be
very unhappy because we have managed to build the worst
example of architecture in the country.

While these negative views are common amongst the

intellectual elite, the architect cited above is right that most
people are probably quite happy. For many of the residents
in the area, with or without a relation to the Saint, it is a
source of pride that they live near one of Pakistans largest
mosques. Many also share, at least today and in retrospect,
the criticism of the way the Shrine was administered before
the nationalization. Overall, the modernization is thus seen
as a positive development. A major role in this evaluation is
the general condition of the area around the Shrine. Being
extremely congested, loud and with almost no public spaces,
the new Shrine complex also fulfils a recreational function.

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Facilities such as the madrasa, library and particularly the

hospital add to the value of the Shrine as a social, as well
as a religious space.
There were however, also critical voices, if only a few
because of the general political circumstances during the
Zia regime. One of the complaints about the new structure
has already been mentioned, the construction of shops,
which were first under the mosques basement, later under
the roof garden. Another point of debate was a small
mosque that was previously not attached to the Shrine but
situated just to the east of it. While the demolition of the
Hujwiri-mosque was compensated by the new mosque, the
destruction of the Bahawalpuri mosque, as it was called,
was seen as problematic. The matter was solved by officially
including the mosque into the new complex. It is situated
on its original site, and is nothing more than a small room
in the first basement, close to the southern entrance to the
langar khana.
While initially few donations were made when the Auqaf
Department asked the public for its contribution to the
project, donations into the cash boxes have continually
increased and make the Shrine the most income generating
of all shrines in the Punjab, with a share of almost a third
of all the income from more than four hundred shrines,
a fact we will return to in the next chapter. During the
time of construction, despite the constraints for the
visitors, numbers increased, while they declined at many
other shrines (cf. Ewing 1997, 88). Thus, the political
appropriation and the extension of the shrines facilities did

Making Data Darbar Modern

101

in fact turn the Shrine into the most important sacred site
in the country.
From a European or Western point of view, it seems strange
that not more was done to prevent the modernization and
protect the old buildings. After all there is a sense that
historical buildings somehow connect us with the times
in which they were built. However, as one architect put
it, that person (the saint) is symbolized by the place, not
the physical structure itself .37 Other architects disagree
pointing out that for many Muslims in Pakistan it is the
shape of the dome that serves as the face of the ancient
saints of whom no pictures exist. This is supported by the
case of Data Darbar, where the only visible remaining
architectural feature of the Shrine from before Partition is
in fact the dome of the Shrine.
Another reason that negative reactions remained few was
that those influential among the visitors, especially from the
neighbourhood of the sajjada nishins, have profited from
the enlargement, because more visitors came that spent
money in the markets around the Shrine, a large part of
which is under the control of this group. Apart from this,
the way the development of the Shrine is remembered can
also be distinctly different from the academic historians
perspective. The following story, told to me in one of the
oldest shops next to the Shrine by one of the employees, is
just one example of how those directly affected have made
their own history:

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So where there is the mosque now, that place was called ucha
tibba pathana da (mount of the Pathans), so we used to live
on that mount. So where the northern minaret is today, thats
where my house was. Maybe twenty families lived there. I had
a relative, he was a rascal. He had long hair and beard and a
big chest. He used to smoke hashish and if the police tried to
stop him he would just beat them. So one day Zia ulHaq was
there, there was a caravan of cars and my relative jumped from
where he stood and landed just in front of one of the cars.
So they took him away and beat him and tortured him. They
thought that he was from the RAW (Research and Analysis
Wing, the Indian intelligence agency), or CIA, or something
like that. After a week, when he did not tell them anything,
Zia ulHaq said: Bring him to me! So they brought him to
the General and when there, Zia asked him: Why did you
jump? He said: I wanted to meet you. I knew they would
beat me and torture me and at some time bring me in front
of you. So Zia asked: What do you want? He answered,
face to face with Zia: Look, this shrine is a big shrine, but
its mosque is too small. So the shrine should have a bigger
mosque. Zia asked him, where the mosque should be and he
said the mosque should be on the tibba and that they would
make place for it. And then Zia gave us the houses in the fruit
market and they built the new mosque.38

Through the story, a process that was highly undemocratic

and happened largely without any integration or
participation of those living in the area, becomes turned
around, giving this group back the capacity to influence
their resettlement and become an agent of positive change
to the Shrine. In the cause it makes use of stereotype
images of the Pathan, strong, wild and without respect for

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103

the wrong authorities, who will overcome any physical pain

in order to achieve his goals.
[Link]Conclusion: Bhutto, Zia, SharifAttitudes
towards Data Darbar

The historical development that forms the background of

how the shrine functions today and what it represents can
only be briefly summarized here. It would be well worth the
effort to look closer at this process of turning a Shrine with
mainly local importance into one of the largest and most
important Muslim sacred spaces of the subcontinent.39
What is important for this study, however, is to see that
the political and social dimensions of the Shrine today are
the result of a process of appropriation that took shape in
various forms during different political eras. Under Ayub
Khan it was first and foremost a measure to minimize the
power of the class of traditional caretakers. For Bhutto
the shrines served largely as a stage to show his closeness
to the people. Zia it seemed, was maybe the one with the
closest personal attachment to the Shrine and used it to
show that Pakistan was modern and that this did not
contradict it being Islamic. For the politicians that came
after, the Shrine was already established as a stage for giving
speeches, making generous donations to the public and
more and more also to define proper Islam. The last point
is one of the core concerns of this study. Before looking
at the way the Auqaf Department and the administration
of the Shrine alongside some of the countrys political
and economical elite shape a national religious identity,

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we can already get an idea of how this complex identity

is shaped simply by looking at the architecture of Data
Darbar: considering the reformist movements, Saudi
Arabian contacts and at the same time the fact that a large
portion of the population had close relations to saints, all
leaders saw the need and the difficulty in the enlarged
complex satisfying different groups of people. The Shrine
of Data Ganj Bakhsh thus can be seen as a mirror for the
ambiguous relationship between proper Islam as promoted
by parts of the elite, foreign friends and a growing middle
class and what most people live in their everyday life.
When looking at the original design, it becomes evident
that the Shrine itself was to be framed by the modern
design around itthe Saint was part of modern Islam
(see Fig. 8). My interpretation of the major changes is a
redefinition of this relationship between the Saint and
modern Islam: The Shrine has become a historical site,
commemorating an early Muslim, important for spreading
Islam in the region and beside it stands the modern
architecture, representing the clean, open, modern and
above all transnational Islam. All of this is accompanied
by facilities making the visit easier and more comfortable
for the rich. No other shrine in Lahore can so easily be
reached by car or is so clean and spacious. At the same time,
the majority of visitors come because of the Saint and they
will do so, no matter what architects do to it. The Auqaf
Department has thus managed to build a complex that on
the one hand increases the attraction to the elite and those
critical of folk-Islam, while also making it possible for

Making Data Darbar Modern

105

more visitors to come because of their personal relationship

with the Saint, by simply enlarging the physical space. The
Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh can therefore be seen as a
point of convergence for devotees of many backgrounds
who otherwise have little in common (Ewing 1997, 88).

The Functional Division of Space

After the completion of the complex and its inauguration
on the 31 May 1999, the shrine had become a place unlike
any other shrine in Pakistan, both in terms of its size as well
as the complexity of its architecture. A central part of this
complexity is the division into functionally distinct spaces.
Before turning to the way the Shrine is managed today and
the various groups that have an influence on decisions made
at the Shrine, this short chapter will introduce the physical
space of the shrine as well as the activities that define these
spaces by giving a short description as well as presenting a
number of photographs and maps for an overview. Its main
purpose is to give the reader an overview of the Shrine and
its complexity.
Although the construction has long been finished, the
Shrines architecture and internal usage still change. The
situation presented here, is what the Shrine looked like and
how it was divided at the beginning of my second fieldwork
in autumn of 2009. I will later turn to some of the major
changes that have happened since then, one being the
closing of the roof gardens grass areas with marble, the
other being the various changes to the Shrine to heighten

The F unctional Division of Space

107

the level of security which took place both before the attack
on the Shrine in July 2010, as well as after.
An important factor for how the Shrine is structured is the
two-phased construction of the complex. In the first phase
construction was carried out only to the west and north of
the ghulam gardish, in the second phase the area to the east
was constructed. Still no passage between the two areas
exists except for the verandas and courtyard on the upper
level. On the ground level the two spaces are divided by the
langar khana in form of a long passage that connects the
markets on the two sides of the Shrine complex and almost
serves as a small street. Because the Shrine was situated on
a mould and the streets around it are descending from the
east to west, it is difficult to name the different floors of the
Shrine. The uppermost floor consisting of the roof garden,
ghulam gardish, courtyard and mosque is almost at ground
level near the eastern entrances, while being the second
floor when viewed from the eastern entrances. In addition
to dividing the complex into different floors, for the
presentation I will also look at the space in terms of spheres
of activity by the visitors and the staff of the administration.
This division is also helpful when looking at the Shrine
as a space of representations. In the analogy of the Shrine
as a theatre, it is the sphere of activity of the visitors that
serves as a stage for the state to present its version of Islam.
Everything else can probably best be described as behind
the scenes, although visitors have some restricted access to
these areas for example when approaching the managers
office or making use of the library.

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4.1Entrances, Shoe-Keeping and

Ablution Areas

Before threats to the Shrine led the authorities to close

as many of the entrances as possible, there were a total
of six major entrances to the Shrine. The most important
entrances are the two eastern entrances from the Lower
Mall Road. It is here that rickshaws, buses and taxis drop
off visitors, as well as being the entrances closest to the
Walled City, from where many visitors come on foot.
Because many people pay tribute to the Saint simply by
stopping for a few minutes in front of the Shrine, these are
also the only entrances where donation boxes are positioned
outside the complex. The entrances are divided into the
northern entrance for women and the southern entrance
for men. Next in importance is the golden gate entrance to
the south of the ghulam gardish. It is the shortest passage
to the tomb and being an attraction in itself is therefore
also used by some of the visitors coming from Lower Mall
Road. Opposite the golden gate entrance on the northern
side is the second womens entrance. Further to the west
then come two entrances that lead into small courtyards to
the north and south of the mosque courtyard and the space
underneath the courtyard.
Through these courtyards one can enter the mosque
courtyard directly via two staircases or enter the ablution
area underneath the mosque courtyard and from there reach
the halls, where langar is provided on Thursday nights by
groups of visitors (Fig. 17). From here one can also enter
the upper floor of the complex. From the northern entrance

The F unctional Division of Space

109

and courtyard one can additionally enter a branch of the

National Bank of Pakistan as well as the offices around
the small green graveyard at ground floor situated beneath
the womens side of the complex. This entrance is also
called the VIP entrance, because it is possible to drive
into the courtyard thus making the passage to the mosque
as well as to the administrators office very short. It is
also the car parking area for the higher officials of the
Auqaf Department when they visit the Shrine (Fig. 11).
All the entrances are relatively wide, thus in principal
making it possible for a number of people to enter and leave
at the same time. Due to the growing security concerns
however, entrances have been narrowed so that only one
visitor at a time can go through. Since the beginning
of 2010, in preparation for urs, all entrances have metal
detectors. In particular the Lower Mall Road and golden
gate entrances are often crowded with people going in and
out as well as people offering sweets and flowers or food
for the langar for which they have small cards showing
the prices for different amounts of food. The event of
entering the shrine thus becomes a squeezing through this
crowd until one must stand in front of a police officer and
sometimes a volunteer, who body check all visitors.
At all entrances it is possible to leave ones shoes with shoe
keepers. This includes entrances to the sama hall in the
first basement, which can be entered from a northern and
a southern entrance as well as from the eastern veranda.
The shoe-keeping task is outsourced to contractors on
an annual basis. An average of two to four people are

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MANAGING PIETY

positioned on both sides of the entrances. Each team has

its own cardboards and some small benches as a border
between themselves and the visitors. In the courtyards of
the western entrances they have some improvised stalls to
keep the shoes safe from rain. The young men give out
cardboards with numbers on them when receiving the shoes
and the service is paid for when the shoes are given back at
the end of the visit. Although some people take their shoes
with them, the majority leave them with the shoe keepers.
The space for the shoe-keeping was not part of the new
complex design, but was added later.
Immediately after taking off their shoes, most visitors do
the ritual washing in the ablution areas. The ablution area
at the eastern entrances is situated just after the steps that
lead from the entrance into the roof garden. Beyond the
ablution area no one wears their shoes, while in the area
between shoe-keeping and washing, some still do. This
space in between is architecturally separated from the
verandas with a different floor of simple stone in contrast
to the white marble beginning at the steps up to the
veranda and roof garden. On the womens side, the area
for washing is situated before the ghulam gardish. At the
golden gate entrance there is no ablution area immediately
available, visitors either use the area at the eastern side
of the roof garden or the second ablution area situated
under the mosque courtyard. From the western entrances
there are ablution areas inside the courtyard as well as the
main ablution area under the mosque courtyard already
mentioned.

The F unctional Division of Space

111

4.2The Roof Garden, Ghulam Gardish

and Tomb

In the original design, a central concept was that the Shrine

(here defined as the tomb and its dome) and the new
mosque should be visible to visitors even from outside the
complex (cf. Fig. 8). The large area to the east of the ghulam
gardish was therefore designed as an open space. This does
not mean that it was conceptualized as a space without
function. In reminisces of traditional shrine courtyards
in which most activities took place under the shade of
trees, the open space was envisioned by the architects as a
garden in which among other activities also the qawwali
sessions were to take place. It was also thought of as giving
the complex the recreational feature that despite their
religious importance has always been part of visiting a
shrine. According to Ghafer Shahzad40, the main reason to
architecturally close the roof garden by building a veranda
around it was a practical one. There was a need to control
the space, have distinguishable entrances and more space
that was protected from rain and sun, e.g. for the shoekeeping.
Despite being enclosed by the verandas, the roof garden is
the largest area of the complex giving it the impression of
an open and wide space. Until early 2010 it was divided
into four grass areas with large skylights for the sama hall
and marbled walkways with a fountain at the centre. The
grass areas have been closed in the meantime, thus turning
the whole of the roof garden into a marbled courtyard.
Although at many shrines major activities take place in the

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garden, including teaching sessions and qawwali concerts,

at Data Darbar the garden is seldom used for much more
than people strolling around, making phone calls or taking
pictures. Since no trees give shade, those visitors that spend
hours sitting in the complex will sit in the veranda or the
area around the tomb (ghulam gardish). It is also forbidden
to eat or drink in the garden. The fountain at the centre
is used only during the summer heat and it contains the
inauguration tablet made of glass. While being the largest
space, the roof garden is at the same time the least used and
least distinguished by a particular activity. Only at the time
of urs is it really used, when every space available is needed
because of the sheer amount of visitors. Before changes
were made to the roof garden, there was a space to burn
candles and small oil lamps with incense which was shifted
to the southern courtyard outside the mosque at first and
later to a small area near the main womens entrance.
From the main entrance one can either walk through the
roof garden towards the tomb, or along the side of it in the
shaded verandas. The verandas are often used by visitors
to sit and relax, from here one can look down into the
streets around the Shrine. Before coming to the ghulam
gardish there are two spaces where the roof is open above
the langar khana passage. Here people also often watch
the langar distribution. Some people distributing langar
also stand here ordering the langar to be distributed in
their name by one of the many employees of langar shops
who walk through the complex advertising langar on small
cardboards. Just in front of the ghulam gardish are a number

The F unctional Division of Space

113

of graves from disciples of Ali Hujwiri that were relocated

here when the new complex was built.
The ghulam gardish is the central part of the Shrine
containing the actual grave, the chilla gah of Moinuddin
Chishti, a well, and an area reserved for reading the Quran.
The area is protected from sun and rain, the floor is covered
by carpets and the ceiling is richly decorated, making it a
comfortable place to sit for long periods of time. It is filled
during all times of the day (and often through the night)
with visitors sitting in prayer, reading the Quran, waiting
in line to approach the Saints tomb through one of the
windows or simply sitting around. In order to give a view
of the tomb to both men and women, the ghulam gardish is
divided by a wall separating the northern from the southern
part.
To the southern side of the ghulam gardish is the golden gate
entrance. The area between this entrance and the tomb is
the one with most donation boxes and almost always filled
with people. On Thursday nights, when the crowds reach
several tens of thousands of people, volunteers organize the
visitors to line-up in this area for approaching the tomb
windows.
At the centre of the ghulam gardish is the tomb, surrounded
by the octangular structure41 mentioned earlier. Caretakers
(khadims), stand at the windows where the visitors pay their
tribute and pray. Each window has a donation box in it.
The grave itself is made of marble and the visitors can only
touch the boundary of it. On the grave lies a grave sheet

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MANAGING PIETY

(chaddar) and flowers given by the visitors. From time to

time the caretakers step through the window to straighten
the chaddar, remove some of the flowers and say their
prayers. The high officials do this sometimes as well. All of
the windows are richly decorated with flowers. The inside
of the dome is also decorated. There is just enough space
around the grave for about ten people to stand and this is
where the central ceremony of changing the chaddar takes
place during urs.
If possible, the tomb is normally approached from the
south since this is the feets side of the saint (cf. Shahzad
2010, 89). This is also why the golden gate entrance
immediately to the south of the tomb is considered the
most important entrance by many visitors.
4.3 The Mosque and its Courtyard

On the western side of the ghulam gardish is the large

marbled courtyard of the mosque. It is framed by the
modern-style veranda made up of numerous domes. The
architecture in this part of the complex diverges the least
from the original plan and the area gives off a round picture
only distracted by the green cash boxes and the huge
ventilators standing under the veranda next to the mosque.
Due to the large coloured glass window it is not possible
to look inside the mosque thus dividing the courtyard from
the mosque in a much clearer fashion than is the case in
other large scale mosques in Lahore. The management
has tried to lessen this division by placing a carpet in the
courtyard close to the mosque, which continues inside the

The F unctional Division of Space

115

mosque. The carpet is designed in such a manner that

it looks like small prayer carpets laid side by side. The
enormous glass window gives comfortable light in the
mosque. At both the northern and the southern side of it
are galleries and three bands of calligraphy go around the
entire prayer hall. The hall has no disturbing pillars thus
giving it a tent-like atmosphere.
4.4Other Parts of the Complex

As has been described, the mosque and mosque courtyard

have a lower floor, which can be reached from two
courtyards surrounding it. In it is the ablution area as well
as two large halls to the east and west of it. The eastern hall
is used for the distribution of langar by organized groups
every Thursday night. During this time it fills with several
hundred people. The western hall, which to many visitors
is a part of the mosque because of being directly under it,
is rarely used, except for the Friday prayer and during urs,
when it is divided by a number of curtains and high ranked
officials eat here secluded. Also a first-aid station is situated
here during the time of the festival. Under the staircases
that lead directly to the mosque courtyard from the outside
courtyards are two offices. The southern office is used by
the khadims to store chaddars; the northern office is the
administrators office. Outside this office sit two security
officers during the administrators office hours. Some of
the khadims also often sit here to have their breaks and to
keep track of the latest news and developments, since it is
here that any VIP would enter the Shrine.

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The courtyards around the mosque are used during urs and
Ramadan/Ramzan for cooking langar by some of the large
scale donors. At the back of the mosque there are a number
of rooms with technical equipment.
From the northern courtyard one can enter the offices of
the administration that surround another smaller courtyard.
This is a green graveyard with palm trees reaching all
the way up to the womens side of the roof garden. As
mentioned, another area at this level is the langar khana and
distribution that makes up the passage between northern
and southern market.
Underneath the roof garden are two basements, the lower
one a car parking basement that can be reached by two
driveways next to the entrances at the eastern side of the
complex. Although there are direct staircases linking the car
parking basement to the upper basement, these are not in
use, except by staff of the Shrine and visitors using the car
parking use the driveways and then take a normal entrance
to enter the Shrine. The car parking accommodates several
hundred cars, motorcycles and bicycles and is run by
subcontractors.
The upper basement can be reached through three
entrances, one situated to the east of the roof garden just
after the entrance and two situated to the north and south
of the roof garden. The first is only open during urs, the
two others additionally at the time of qawwali sessions
when it is also possible to leave ones shoes here. From these
entrances one has to walk down steps to reach the basement
with the sama hall.

The F unctional Division of Space

117

The sama hall is a large square room divided in the middle

by a metal fence. It is only used on Thursday afternoons
and special occasions like urs when it is richly decorated
and carpets are laid out on the floor. The weekly concerts
are played by a number of qawwali groups between two
and five oclock, a very short period of time in comparison
with such activities at other shrines. The concerts are often
viewed by two to three hundred people. Although a large
number of people, they take up only a very small part of
the sama hall, making it seem much too big for the purpose.
During other times, the room is empty and one can wander
through it or take rest from the busy surroundings of the
Shrine. Although some light comes through the skylights
made of green glass, when in use for concerts the room
is lit by neon lamps adding to the feeling of a sterile and
empty room. The sama hall was not originally designed
for this purpose. In the new complex design the qawwali
sessions were to take place in the roof garden with a view of
the Shrine itself. Having a direct view of the Shrine while
singing (and listening) to the qawwali is by some believed
to enhance the emotions to create ecstasy while singing
(Shahzad 2010, 100).
The sama hall is surrounded by corridors, connecting it to
the other surrounding rooms. Here we find the madrasa,
library and research centre, as well as the police station
and some office occupied by government institutions, as
well as one NGO, all of which will be presented in the
next chapter.

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

The central aim of this study is to understand why and
how the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh is used to facilitate
the states and non-state actors various interests. In this
chapter a closer look is taken at how the Shrine of Data
Ganj Bakhsh is being administered and managed. This
includes looking at the various institutions and actors that
at different levels take part in the Shrines development and
in the complex process of decision-making. It will also shed
some light on the various interests, sometimes conflicting,
of the parties involved and thus show the Shrines political
function. The chapter is roughly divided into sections
dealing with a particular institution or group of actors.
The last section however, uses the annual urs festival as an
example of how all of these actors interact and especially
of how the administration of the Shrine and the Auqaf
Department make use of the Shrine to promote their view
of what is the proper Islam.

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

119

5.1The Department of Auqaf and

Religious Affairs

5.1.1Powers, Internal Organization and

Relationship to the Political Elite

Before we can understand how Data Darbar is administered,

it is necessary to look at the government department
in charge of it, as well as the Shrines role within the
department. The Department of Auqaf and Religious
Affairs has had changing names over time and is
commonly known as the Auqaf Department or simply
the Auqaf . It is today a provincial department under the
government of Punjab. As has been mentioned, it was
a provincial department when it was first established in
1960. After being a federal department under Bhutto it
was made provincial again under the Punjab Waqf Properties
Ordinance, 1979. This ordinance is still the legal frame for
the Auqaf Departments work.42 Its subtitle reads as follows:
An Ordinance to provide for the proper management and
administration of waqf properties in the Province of the
Punjab(GOP 2012a). The definition of waqf property in
the ordinance is:
waqf property means property of any kind permanently
dedicated by a person professing Islam for any purpose
recognized by Islam as religious, pious or charitable, but
does not include property of any such waqf as is described in
section 3 of the Mussalman Waqf Validating Act, 1913 (VI of
1913), under which any benefit is for the time being claimable
for himself by the person by whom the waqf was created or by
any member of his family or descendants (Ibid.).

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The definition is followed by a number of explanations that

have far-reaching consequences:
Explanation 1If a property has been used from time
immemorial for any purpose recognized by Islam as religious,
pious or charitable, then inspite of there being no evidence of
express dedication, such property shall be deemed to be waqf
property.
Explanation 2Property allotted in lieu or in exchange
of waqf property left in India shall be deemed to be waqf
property.
Explanation 3Property of any kind acquired with the sale
proceeds or in exchange of or from the income arising out of
waqf property or from subscriptions raised for any purpose
recognized by Islam as religious, pious or charitable shall be
deemed to be waqf property.
Explanation 4The income from boxes placed at a shrine and
offerings, subscriptions or articles of any kind, description or
use presented to a shrine or to any person at the premises of
a shrine, shall be deemed to be waqf property.
Explanation 5Property permanently dedicated for the
purposes of a mosque, takia, khankah, dargah or other shrine
shall be deemed to be waqf property.
Explanation 6Relief of the poor and the orphan, education,
worship, medical relief, maintenance of shrines or the
advancement of any other object of charitable, religious or
pious nature or of general public utility shall be deemed to be
charitable purposes (Ibid.).

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

121

Explanation 1 and 5 effectively establish any shrine as

waqf property, no matter if it has ever been declared as a
waqf by the saint, the shrine holder or any other person in
possession of the property on which the shrine is situated.
Explanation 2, 3 and 4 further extend the concept of the
waqf to any form of income or revenue that comes from
such properties, thus making it possible for example to
claim the income of a shrine without having to take it over.
The executing power to take over waqf properties lies with
the Chief Administrator Auqaf:
The Chief Administrator may, by notification, take over
and assume the administration, control, management and
maintenance of a waqf property []. ExplanationFor
the purposes of this section control and management shall
include control over the performance and management of
religious, spiritual, cultural and other services and ceremonies
(Rasoomat) at or in a waqf property. No person shall perform
services or ceremonies (Rasoomat) referred to in subsection (1)
except with the prior permission of the Chief Administrator
and in accordance with such directions as may be given by
him (Ibid.).

Once a waqf has been taken over, the former owner or

administrator can appeal against the decision. However the
case can take years to be decided and in the meantime no
court, including the High Court can issue a temporarily
injunction or order (Ibid.).
It is remarkable that there are no institutions within the
department which in any way control or restrict the Chief
Administrator. The position is appointed by the government

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of Punjab through the Secretary for Religious Affairs and

Auqaf, who in recent years has been the same person as
the Chief Administrator and thus will in most cases be
politically in line with the Chief Minister of Punjab. It
was pointed out by a number of informants both inside
and outside the Auqaf Department, that the post of Chief
Administrator Auqaf/Secretary of Auqaf and Religious
Affairs is a position normally given to a person as a reward
for their work in other state departments. Thus the post is
rarely held by the same person for more than two years, in
most cases between a couple of months and a year. While
being almost omnipotent within the department on paper,
the person in charge relies heavily on his subordinates for
making decisions.
The Auqaf Department is divided into seven subdivisions
each headed by a director. The most important post is that
of the Director for Religious Affairs and Auqaf, followed by
the Directors for Administration, Estate, Finances, Health
Services, Ulama Academy and a Director for Projects, which
in recent years has been held by the Director of Religious
Affairs and Auqaf. Each director has at least two assistant
directors. Under the Director for Administration there are
additionally eleven Zone Administrators. A zone typically
comprises of up to fifty shrines in two or three districts of
the Punjab. Lahore is one zone but the Data Ganj Bakhsh
shrine and the Badshahi mosque are excluded to form their
own zones. Data Darbar is the only zone, where the Zone
Administrator is not appointed by the Chief Administrator,
but directly by the Governor or Chief Minister of Punjab.

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123

Normally, each Zone Administrator has district managers

who act as the custodian of the auqaf properties of that
specific zone, since they are the ones who actually travel
around in their districts. However, at the Shrine of Data
Ganj Bakhsh the Zone Administrator himself is the
custodian when at his office inside the Shrine, when not,
it is the manager on duty. All employees under the Zone
Administrator work within the districts or zones.
The Auqaf Department itself with all other employees is
situated behind the High Court in Lahore, only few minutes
from Data Darbar. Most of the day-to-day decisions are
made either by the directors or their assistant directors.
The Chief Administrators main occupation is to sign and
approve decisions made, as well as to be the representative
of the department at various occasions, e.g. the urs
celebrations at all major shrines and the inauguration of
finished development projects. As one informant put it, by
the time the new Chief Administrator has been around the
province to see all the shrines in order to get an overview,
half of the time he has in office will already have passed.43
When large-scale decisions are made, e.g. architectural
changes to a major shrine, the Chief Administrator will be
advised by the Director for Religious Affairs as well as the
Chief Minister of Punjab or the Governor. Additionally,
some of the Religious Purpose Committees (RPC) of the
shrines are sometimes included. The RPCs were established
to counter the criticism that the shrines were run purely
by bureaucrats. The RPC for a shrine normally consists of
at least seven persons in which there is a chairman from

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the public, the Khateeb Imam of the mosque is nominated

as member whereas the manager acts as secretary of the
committee (Government of Punjab 2012d). In the case of
Data Darbar, the RPC has around fifteen members most
of whom are from Punjabs political elite. The Chairman
in recent years has been Ishaq Dar, finance minister under
Nawaz Sharif.
The appointment of the influential figures inside the Auqaf
Department by the Chief Minister or Governor directly
or indirectly has institutionalized the close ties between
the administration of the shrines and the political elite.
However, at least the directors seem to be appointed largely
because of their individual competences, rather than their
political affiliation and most of them stay in their position
until retirement. As is often the case in Pakistan, behind the
scenes, people with an open admiration for Bhutto and the
PPP (Pakistan Peoples Party) work together closely with
figures from the PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League (N)).
When it comes to religious questions it is not surprising
therefore, that the department largely works on what could
be considered common ground. Extreme positions can
be held by individuals, however in the decision-making
process there will always be a number of people working
as a corrective.
5.1.2Income and Expenditure

The Auqaf Department is financially independent from

the government of Punjab. Although we have seen that
in the construction phase of the Data Darbar Complex

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125

the government did give the department a loan, this was

an exception based largely on the personal commitment
to the project by Nawaz Sharif. The income from the
shrines is therefore essential to the department. The Waqf
Ordinance established that the income of the auqaf taken
over by the state has to be used for any purpose recognized
by Islam as religious, pious or charitable, as the Chief
Administrator may deem fit (GOP 2012a). As a rule,
20 per cent of the total income has to be spent on the
shrines themselves. It is also practice that whatever surplus
a fiscal year brings will be transferred to the next year for
development works. Often these two rules complement
each other. The main source of income is from cash boxes
(50 per cent), which are positioned on the premises of the
shrines. Next in importance is the money from the lease
of land (16 per cent), rent for shops (12 per cent), and
the income from contracts for services, most importantly
the shoe-keeping (5 per cent). Most of these incomes are
relatively constant with the income of rents, lease and
shoe-keeping decreasing slightly over the past years and
the cashbox income increasing (GOP 2012d). The income
that varies the most is the money from donations. As we
will see in the next chapters, it is here that the department
constantly tries to improve its revenue. When it comes to
the geographical differences in income it is little surprising
that those zones where most of the shrines are in rural
areas have a higher percentage of lease money than is the
case in the urban zones of Multan, Pakpattan and Lahore
([Link] 1996, 723). When we look at the income of the
individual zones, Data Darbar is by far the most important,

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with a 25 per cent share (this was an exceptional year in

this regard, with the percentage normally being around 30
per cent) (see Table 1).
All the income of the auqaf is transferred to the Auqaf
Fund. All the individual zones, as well as the Badshahi
mosque, the Data Darbar Hospital, the Ulama Academy, the
Markaz-e-Muarif Aulia (library, research centre and madrasa
in the basement of Data Darbar) and the head office have
individual budgets that are approved and allocated annually.
The expenditure for the head office is a little over a quarter
of the total expenditure, making up the largest portion.
The hospital, with a budget making up almost 14 per cent,
is the institution for which most money is spend. The
overall expenditure is divided by the Auqaf Department
into expenditure for administration, religious affairs, social
welfare, health and the 20 per cent development budget
for the next fiscal year. At first sight, only health and social
welfare fall under charitable purposes and with a share
of only 15 per cent this is a rather low figure taking into
account the Waqf Ordinances ideal. The specifications in the
ordinance are very vague however, leaving it up to the Chief
Administrator to decide which purposes are recognized by
Islam as religious. This would include everything which
the Auqaf Department categorizes as Religious Affairs,
making up 40 per cent of the total expenditure. The
category however, entails all expenditure on employees not
falling into the category of administration, including in the
case of Data Darbar not only the employees of the religious
wing, e.g. the Khateeb Imam, but also the electricians and

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

127

other technical personnel. If the categorization was done

differently, the percentage spent on those purposes that
would generally be perceived as religious or charitable,
would only be around 20 per cent. Jamal Malik (1996, 73)
has therefore criticized the Auqaf Department for using a
too high percentage of the income on the administration in
comparison to those purposes that a generally considered to
be the objects of a waqf.
Table 1
Income and Expenditure (Zonewise) in 2009/2010
Zone Income
(in %)

Expenditure
(in %)

Ratio

6,705 (1.1)

1.9

24,976 (4.2)

2.6

Data Darbar

175,915 (25.5)

40,970 (6.8)

Lahore

112,133 (16.3)

79,165 (13.2)

27,160 (3.9)

21,099 (3.5)

Badshahi Masjid

Gujranwala
Rawalpindi
Faisalabad
Sargodha

Pakpattan
Multan

DG Khan

Bahawalpur

Data Darbar Hospital

Markaz-e-Muarif Aulia

12,775 (1.9)

63,860 (9.3)
60,574 (8.8)
33,228 (4.8)

76,827 (11.2)
33,504 (4.9)
26,750 (3.9)
63,793 (9.3)
2,576 (0.4)

Ulama Academy
Head Office
Total

In thousand Rupees.
Source: GOP 2011.

29,424 (4.9)
22,749 (3.8)
31,063 (5.2)
36,257 (6.0)
16,477 (2.7)
34,269 (5.7)

83,278 (13.8)
5,025 (0.8)
6,308 (1.1)

689,095

164,308 (27.3)
602,073

4.3

1.4
1.3
2.1
1.5
2.5
0.9
1.6
1.9

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5.1.3 Data Darbar as a Financial Paradigm

The position of Data Darbar within the Auqaf Department

is exceptional. In an interview, the Chief Administrator
explained this with respect to the Shrines popularity and
its position as the most important shrine of Pakistan.44
Thus, in the self-perception of the department, its focus
on the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh is a result of external
factors. These are, for example, the growth of numbers
of visitors to the Shrine which can be explained by the
general growth of the population, but also the translation
of the Kashf al-Mahjub, and the fact that a bus stand was
established close to the Shrine, where many villagers arrive
when coming to Lahore. Also the closeness to the socially
important area around the Bhati Gate of the Walled City
could have had a positive influence in this regard. This
view ignores the fact that the Shrines outstanding position
has evolved after independence, and especially after the
political appropriation and enlargement of the Shrine, and
that the department itself has contributed to this process
of making the Shrine outstanding in comparison to many
other shrines that were of similar importance when the
first shrines came under state control, such as the shrine
of Mian Mir.
The statement also leaves out the position the Shrine has
within the department in financial terms. One could hold
against this view that the prime position of the Shrine is
instead a result of its role first as a political stage and second
as a prime source of income for the Auqaf Department.

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

129

No matter in which proportion external factors or internal

factors have played a role in making Data Darbar the most
important shrine of Pakistan, today the Auqaf Department
relies heavily on the Shrine as a source of income.
Unofficially the department clearly focuses on increasing
its income at this particular spot and has even given the
administration of the Shrine the directive to increase its
cash box income by 20 per cent per annum. As we will see,
this directive has consequences for the way the Shrine is
run.
With a share of between 25 and 30 per cent of the income,
while at the same time having only an expenditure of
around 5 per cent, one would expect the head office to
be more than pleased with the performance of the Shrine
and instead to concentrate on other shrines to increase its
overall income. To some extent this is the case, because
despite its exceptionality, the historical development of
Data Darbar under the Auqaf Department is also seen
as a model for other shrines. Development projects are
carried out at most of the larger shrines of the province.
Important factors for a positive potential of a shrine, based
on the paradigm of Data Darbar, are an urban locality, the
possibility of spatial expansion and, to some extent, the
size of the shrine, because of the economy of scale that
does not make halt at a religious site. The first two factors
do collide at times, since the acquisition of land around
a shrine can be a lengthy and costly process in a densely
populated area, an example being the Baba Farid shrine in
Pakpattan. The economy of scale is important because the

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major expenditure for all shrines is the labour cost. Even

the smallest shrine needs a sweeper, caretaker, manager,
etc. but might generate very little income. A remarkable
number reflecting the impact of the size of a shrine on its
economy is the ratio between income and expenditure for
different zones. Unfortunately there is no direct comparison
between income and expenditure for the smallest shrines,
given that the employees are not responsible for one
shrine, but rather all the shrines of a district. However,
when comparing Data Darbar with the zone of DG Khan
we can gain an approximation, because there is no larger
shrine in the latter zone.45 For Data Darbar the ratio is 4.3,
generating an income four times its expenditure. For the
DG Khan zone the income is only 1.6 times larger than its
expenditure (see Table 1).
Jamal Malik (1996, 74) in his study of the dissolution
of traditional Islamic institutions in Pakistan as well
as Katherine Ewing (1997, 878) in her study on the
discourse on Sufism, shrines and pirs in Lahore, point out
that the Auqaf Department is neglecting smaller shrines
and both see this as an active policy to further diminish the
influence of those sajjada nishins who do not comply with
government policies. The economy of scale would clearly
support such a policy. In discussions with employees of the
head office and the Data Darbar administration, such a
policy was obviously never admitted and even though the
smaller shrines often do have a smaller ratio of income and
expenditure it is also clear that, if administered through a

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

131

district manager and other mobile employees, the smaller

shrines do still make a profit for the Auqaf Department.
The overall policy of the department can thus be
summarized as running the majority of the rural and smaller
shrines with a minimum of effort, while concentrating on
the development of a few larger shrines to tap the full
economic potential these shrines have. From the perspective
of the Auqaf Department, Data Darbar and its historical
development thus marks the paragon for all other state-run
shrines under its control.
5.2The Administration and Management
of Data Darbar

5.2.1General Organization and Work Tasks

The administration of a shrine with the size and importance

of Data Darbar is an immense task. As mentioned earlier,
between thirty and sixty thousand people come to the
Shrine daily needing shoe-keeping, washrooms, parking
and food. Most tasks are dealt with by state employees
of the Department for Religious Affairs and Auqaf,
working at the Shrine under the Zone Administrator
Data Darbar. A total of one hundred and sixteen civil
servants are employed, not including the seventy-five
security officers who are also paid by the department on
a daily basis. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the
Auqaf Department divides all staff into the two categories
of Administration and Religious Affairs, which is little
helpful in understanding how the Shrine is actually run.

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From the perspective of the administration the employees

have been divided further into the administration itself,
the management and two wings, the technical wing and
the religious wing. The administration and the technical
and religious wings have normal working hours, while the
management needs to be available twenty-four hours a day.
Therefore, most of the staff in the management have three
eight-hour shifts and some two twelve-hour shifts. Some
of the staff, like the electricians from the technical wing,
and the khadims (caretakers) working under the religious
wing, are in practice working under the management and
the shift system as well. Under the management is the
langar supervisor, two langri (cooks for langar) and four
security supervisors in charge of the seventy-five security
officers. The security officers also work around the clock
in two shifts.
All of the direct employees are civil servants and each post
is assigned a basic pay scale (BPS). The pay scale not only
defines the income but also establishes a clear hierarchy
of all staff. The highest pay scale at the shrine is that of
the zone administrator and the Khateeb Imam (BPS 18).
Next is the executive officer (BPS 17) who in any other
shrine is in charge of the administration. Given that Data
Darbar is a zone by itself, in this particular case some of
his competencies are taken by the zone administrator. The
subdivisional officer in charge of the technical wing also has
a pay scale of seventeen, however due to the nature of his
job he is not comparable to the executive officer or even the
managers in the decision-making hierarchy. The managers

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

133

have a pay scale of sixteen. Within the administration then

come the office assistant (BPS 14) and the accountant
(BPS 11), as well as some clerks and in the technical wing
there are two sub-engineers (BPS 11) in charge of civil and
electrical engineering with each of their own employees.
The religious wing is headed by the Khateeb Imam. He is
responsible for the juma (Friday) prayer and more generally
for the mosque as well as for the religious aspects of the
administration. Leading the juma prayer and addressing
the people at this occasion is a very important task, as
seen by the fact that should anybody else want to address
the people under juma prayer, he needs approval from
the Director of Religious Affairs as well as by the Chief
Administrator of Auqaf. When a new Khateeb Imam
was to be appointed at Data Darbar a few years ago,
the selection committee comprised of several leading
ulama, but also of all the high ranked officials within the
Auqaf Department as well as from the Religious Purpose
Committee, clearly showing how important it is that the
person addressing the ummah (the Muslim community)
at the Friday prayer is someone with the proper views.
A Rais-ul-tabligh (BPS 15), a teacher of the Quran and
Sunna, a Naib Khateeb (deputy Khateeb, BPS 12), an imam
(BPS 9), a mudarris (teacher, BPS 9) and two muezzins
(those who do the call for prayer, BPS 5) all work under
the Khateeb Imams authority. Even if we include the forty
khadims who in practice work under the management, the
religious wing only comprises of forty-seven employees,
making up only a quarter of the staff. There is thus only

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a very small number of employees (excluding the khadims

not even 0.5 per cent) at the Shrine who work under
the authority of a religious title holder. At first sight, the
Shrine is therefore run largely by bureaucrats. This is hardly
the case however, as we will see later, when examining
some of the biographies of those working at the Shrine.
The technical wing takes care of the facilities, e.g. operating
tube wells for the air conditioning, generators, the water
system and toilets, arrangements for the weekly qawwali
concerts, as well as minor repairs on the complex. The
religious wings basic workload is to organize urs and the
daily and Friday prayers. The largest group of people at the
Shrine works under its management. The manager has to
oversee all the activities inside the complex, including the
opening and closing of the tomb windows at night and
morning time, facilitating the visitors with food through
the administrations own langar kitchen and coordinating
the cash counting that takes place three times a week. For
most of the time he is the person to whom any inquiry
or problem will be forwarded. The manager has a large
office in the area under the womens side of the complex,
but very often he is walking around in and outside of
the Shrine premises. Inside the office there are three TV
screens showing live footage from the surveillance cameras
installed on the complex. In another room next to his office
four screens and several hard disc recorders are available to
view and record footage, since not all footage can be viewed
simultaneously given that there are almost one hundred
cameras installed in the complex. During urs, or when the

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

135

Shrine is considered a potential target for terror attacks,

this room is occupied by security officers in direct radio
contact with other officers on the complex.
While the managers are dealing with the day-to-day
problems, the administration is doing the organizational
work as well as the paperwork. An important part of this
is to document the income and expenditure. The basic
form of income is derived from the donations to the cash
boxes. Non-monetary donations are also common, e.g. in
the form of animals for the langar, and these are taken care
of by a storekeeper who is also in charge of buying the
ingredients for the administrations own langar. Donations
made in the form of chaddars (grave sheets thrown on to
the tomb by visitors) are kept by one of the two senior
khadims in a separate room from other donations. Another
source of income is the rent from shops situated on waqf
land. There are about ninety small shops in the Bilal Ganj
area close to the Shrine plus some shops further away
that give rents of between five hundred and two thousand
rupees per month for the collection of which a rent clerk is
responsible. The rent clerk shares an office with the record
keeper and the office assistant, one of the most important
posts within the administration as we will see later. All of
the administration, except for the Zone Administrator, have
their offices in the same corridor on the western side of
the grass courtyard below the womens side of the complex
(see Fig. 21). The offices have their doors open most of
the time and correspondence between the offices is casual
and frequent. The Zone Administrators office is situated

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MANAGING PIETY

under the northern entrance to the mosque courtyard next

to the ablution area. Its separate and almost insular location
somehow reflects the social relations. While communication
between all other members of the administration is rather
casual, although of course with the proper respect for the
higher officials like the Chief Executive Officer and the
managers, the situation often changes rapidly when the
Zone Administrator arrives. The reasons will be discussed
when looking at how decisions are normally made at the
Shrine and how the administrations staff are positioning
themselves between visitors of the Shrine and the Auqaf
Department.
The administration of the Shrine is also in charge of some
of the social welfare institutions based at the Shrine like
the industrial school for women and the Jahez46 Fund. The
industrial school is run by a teacher paid by a special fund
and here forty-four young women learn stitching and other
crafts normally for a period of three to six months. It is
situated on the eastern side of the grass courtyard.
The Jahez (Dowry) Fund gives a sum of ten thousand
rupees to approximately thirty families every month to
lighten their marriage expenses. Every first Monday of
the month, women line-up outside the Chief Executive
Officers office to hand in their applications, often asking
for help with filling out the forms because of illiteracy.
The workload of the administration depends to a large
extent on the Islamic calendar. During Ramadan food is
distributed at times outside the normal office hours and on

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

137

a much larger scale. Additionally, up to 2500 persons spend

their itikaaf47 inside the mosque and mosque courtyard
and need to be provided shelter and sanitation (the food
is organized by relatives of those sitting in itikaaf). One of
the major activities of the administration is to coordinate
the organization of the annual urs festival dealt with
separately later in this chapter. Other important days are
the Islamic holidays and the urs of Moinuddin Chishti
also celebrated in small scale at the Shrine of Data Ganj
Bakhsh. Additional to these periodical festivities are the
visits to the Shrine by dignitaries both from Pakistan and
abroad, a considerable burden on the administration.
5.2.2 Cash Counting

The most time-consuming task for the administration of

the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh is the counting of the
cash from the donation boxes. As has been mentioned, the
immense growth in income from the Shrine in the decades
since 1960 is largely due to the increase in donations
(cf. Malik 1996, 70). A total of thirty-eight green metal
donation boxes are positioned inside the complex, two
outside. Around one-third of these are positioned in the
ghulam gardish, five at the tomb windows directly in front
of the grave. On all boxes is written a directive to put
the notes inside the box yourself. Most of the boxes are
positioned on a low trolley; they can also be carried by two
large poles put through four metal rings on the sides of the
boxes. The donations are dropped in through large slots in
the metal lid of the box. Three locks, all sealed by a green

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MANAGING PIETY

cloth and a red wax seal are positioned open for display (see
Fig. 23). The boxes outside the Shrine are locked to the
ground. There are boxes at the entrances, around the tomb
in the ghulam gardish, at the mosque and in the mosque
courtyard. The large roof garden and the sama hall have
no boxes.
The boxes are emptied three times a week and the money
is counted and brought to the Data Darbar branch of
the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) located inside
the complex (see Fig. 11). Counting days are Monday,
Wednesday and Saturday. The reason for this is that the
most important days for visitors are Thursdays, Fridays
and Sundays. On the one hand it is important, that the
boxes are not removed on these days, which they are during
the counting, on the other hand it is necessary to count
regularly in order to finish the counting within the working
hours of the highest ranked officials.
The counting starts when all officials have arrived at
their offices and no particular incident keeps them from
attending. Should one of the higher officials like the
zone administrator, manager or the cashier of the bank
be unavailable, the cash will not be counted and stays in
the boxes until the next counting. Out of a sample of two
hundred and thirty-three counting days (from July 2007 to
December 2008) the counting was called off twenty-eight
times, with no particular rhythm or regularity, most due to
public holidays.
When the Zone Administrator has arrived in his office, the
caretakers and some of the clerks start bringing the boxes

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

139

to the area where the money is counted. This used to be

done on the northern veranda of the mosque courtyard,
close to the steps leading down to the courtyard in front
of the bank branch, thus making the walk with the money
as short as possible. For the counting curtains were hung
at the side of the veranda towards the courtyard. After an
incident of theft in 2010, where two employees tried to
hide stacks of notes in their socks, the money counting has
been transferred into the mosque (see Fig. 24). When ten
to twenty boxes have been brought to the spot, the officials
are informed. The space where the counting takes place
is a long rectangular room that makes it possible to sit in
two long rows in order to count and sort the money. On
one side of the room is a table the size of a desk, but only
knee high, on which a telephone is placed. On the table
are some small green plastic caps, normally used by visitors
when entering the ghulam gardish, turned upside down, later
to be used for large notes. When the manager has arrived,
the keys for the boxes, as well as some elastics are placed
there as well. Behind the table are three to five small stools.
When the Zone Administrator and the manager arrive,
the seals of the first boxes are broken. The different parts
of the seal are separated by a worker sitting in a corner of
the room. He also melts the wax for reuse in resealing the
boxes. By this time the visitors of the Shrine are asked to
participate in the counting of the cash. For this a separate
sound system is used than for the call for prayers. When the
khadims, normally three to five, are seated and the manager
has arrived, the counting begins by the manager opening

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the first box. For this he takes three keys from the table.
Every set of forty keys is kept separate, thus making sure no
official can take money out of the boxes by himself. When
the heavy lid of the box is flipped open he bends over, takes
the money out and throws it on the carpet. He repeats this
a couple of times until the box is empty and then goes on
to open the next box. Meanwhile the caretakers and some
of the people sitting at the upper end of the room start
picking out the largest notes (five thousand, one thousand
and five hundred rupees). They also throw the money up
and let it fall through their fingers in order to pick out
everything that is not money and to separate the notes from
each other. Among the content of the boxes are flowers,
pieces of paper with letters on them and odd pieces of
rubbish. One of the khadims has a wooden tray to separate
the coins by sweeping them to the side. They are collected
in a wooden tray which when full is handed to a clerk. He
separates the different coins with the help of some children.
The coins are filled in plastic bags and weighed, the sum is
estimated accordingly.
While big notes, paper, rubbish, flowers and coins are taken
out, the rest of the pile of notes is pushed down the carpet
where the next two to three people are picking out the
hundred and fifty rupee notes, and while doing this, are
pushing the rest further down the carpet. In this manner all
of the money is separated and put into big metal buckets,
standing behind those sitting by the carpet. The two
rows of only men are getting longer during the process of
separation as more and more people are needed for the job.
Around them between five and ten security officers stand

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

141

and watch the procedure as well as making sure that there

are always enough people to help. If people come and just
watch, they are either sent away or asked to sit and help.
One or two of the guards standing at the entrance to the
mosque shout out into the courtyard: young man, come
here while pointing at the volunteer and waving him over,
and upon arrival tell him where to sit. The guards regularly
change peoples position in the line, so that those who
they consider more responsible and trustworthy are sitting
closer to the boxes and thus to the larger notes. The most
important factor in this hierarchy is age.
At the table the officials are watching the process but at the
same time they do office work, signing papers, taking phone
calls and discuss matters among themselves. In this regard
the counting also serves as a regular meeting between
the highest ranked officials, especially the managers and
the Zone Administrator. The Chief Executive Officer
normally stays in his office and to some extent functions
as a manager during the time of cash counting.
The boxes that are emptied are locked and sealed and
brought back to their position as soon as possible in order
to make donations possible again. The position of the boxes
always stays the same. It takes several hours until all boxes
are emptied, the manager who opens the box making sure
that the pile of notes does not get too big by sometimes
waiting with emptying the next box.
After all money is sorted into the buckets, the next step
is putting them in stacks. This means that for about four
people a bucket is emptied on the carpet and they start

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MANAGING PIETY

putting Jinnah on Jinnah, meaning that all notes in a stack

are facing the same way, thus all showing Muhammad Ali
Jinnahs face on the same side. The guards collect the stacks
whenever they see somebody having a large number of
notes in his hand and put them back into the buckets. The
different notes are sorted on different parts of the carpet,
still the big ones towards the end where the boxes stood.
The five thousand, one thousand and five hundred rupees
notes are kept on the table in the green caps and counted
by the administrator, manager or the bank cashier who
normally shows up sometime when the sorting starts, since
there is no reason for him to participate in more than the
counting itself. The sorting into stacks does not take as long
as the first sorting, but it can still take more than an hour
or two. If the procedure started at 11 a.m. which is usual,
it will be early afternoon when the actual counting starts.
If a group of people on one part of the carpet has finished
their pile of notes they will start making stacks of hundred
notes each, held together by elastics. These will be counted
a second time at the table by the cashier and sometimes
some of the higher officials assistants or the accountant.
The counting, or rather the making of countable stacks, is
by far the most time-consuming part and at this stage the
number of volunteers can be a hundred people or more. For
those who sit at the table, as well as for the khadims and the
guards, tea is brought at some stage otherwise there are no
breaks for drinking or eating. When some of the volunteers
want to leave they are asked by the guards why and are only
let go if their reason is plausible. Everybody knows, the
fewer volunteers, the longer the counting will take.

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

143

When all money is in stacks of hundred notes and all

stacks have been recounted, they are put onto the carpet
in bunches of ten, side by side so it is easier to count all
the money. All note sizes are counted separately and the
total number is written down. When all has been checked
twice, the numbers are written down in a book and the
total amount is calculated. This is normally done by the
accountant and checked by the bank cashier. The page in
the book is signed by the manager, the accountant, the
zone administrator and the bank cashier. The money is now
officially in the hands of the bank cashier and the officials
leave. The bank cashier puts all notes into four or five big
linen bags. The bags are carried by volunteers following the
cashier to the bank, accompanied by some of the guards.
This is the end of the counting, sometimes in the early
afternoon, sometimes in the evening.
The whole process of emptying the boxes and counting the
money could be done in much shorter time with the help of
counting machines. Since early 2010, one counting machine
has been acquired that is only sometimes used. The reason
is that the counting is not just something that needs to be
done, but is a central part of the self-representation of the
Auqaf Department and the administration of the Shrine.
Given the common perception that the Auqaf Department
is enriching itself through the shrines, the money counting
has become a public performance (almost a ritual) showing
how responsibly the donations are dealt with. This is
indicated first of all by the fact that the counting is public.
Both the location in the northern veranda of the mosque

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courtyard and the new location inside the mosque are

accessible to the visitors. Even though curtains are put up
in order to have better control of the volunteers coming
and going, it is clear to anyone inside the mosque that the
counting takes place. Moreover the counting is announced
via loudspeaker when the first volunteers are needed. Since
the counting takes so long it is still going on during the
time of dhuhr (noon prayer) and sometimes even until asr
(afternoon prayer) and thus also the later visitors will come
to know about it. Most visitors are curious enough to come
closer to the counting and will quickly find themselves
sitting on the ground counting or sorting the notes. Having
taken part in the counting a number of times the memory
of its effect is still vivid. First of all, one cannot but be
amazed by the amount of money donated to the Shrine.
The piles of money, the buckets full of money, the stacks of
hundred notes, the stacks of hundred notes and lastly the
piles of counted and sorted money are all powerful images
few people would ever forget. Most of the volunteers are
from the lower or middle classes, but even the richest
volunteers will never have seen such amounts of money
(not even at the biggest weddings!). At the same time, any
volunteer will feel upon him the eyes of the guards and
the officials, always being afraid to maybe by accident have
a note slip under ones legs, or something similar, which
could be interpreted as theft. Furthermore the sorting
and counting seems to be never-ending and all of these
impressions add to the physical experience of the money
counting. The effect is that one finds it hard to imagine
that any money could ever get lost in the process. This is

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

145

exactly the message the Auqaf Department wants to send

out. It is further strengthened by a number of small, but
nonetheless, important details. The first contact anyone
makes with giving a donation is the green metal cash box.
On it it says: Put the money in the box with your own
hands thus making it absolutely clear that none of the
employees of the Auqaf Department/Shrine are eligible to
collect donations in the name of the Saint. Secondly, the
boxes lids are locked with three large padlocks positioned
clearly visible on the top of the boxes. These are sealed, all
of which symbolizes thorough security measures. Another
detail that will not go unnoticed by the volunteers is the
presence of the bank cashier who carries an official badge
from the National Bank of Pakistan.
With an average of four to seven hours, the cash counting
takes up almost half of the working time of the higher
officials at the Shrine. Both the amount of time dedicated
to the counting and the way it is carried out exemplify
that the Auqaf Department acknowledges the proper
dealing with the donations made to the Shrine as central
to its image in the public. Many of my contacts, especially
the younger people, did in fact view the way the Auqaf
Department deals with the Shrine and the money as
positive. A friend of mine living in the Bilal Ganj area
told me, when I asked him about the Shrine and what
he thought the donations were used for, that they were
used on the hospital and that that was the place he was
born. Another friend of mine was far more sceptical, when
I told him about the money counting he simply said: its

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not when they get the money that they take their share,
its when they spend it! The two positions reflect a strong
trend I found whenever talking to people about the Auqaf
Department and the administration of the Shrine. In
many cases the departments work was viewed positively
by those who visited the Shrine regularly or lived in the
area, while those living in the richer residential areas, often
with a much higher degree of education but with almost no
personal connection to the Shrine, were extremely critical.
One can thus say that the department has clearly managed
to improve its image, however public perception of its work
by those that do not visit it will stay critical.
5.2.3 Income and Expenditure

When I told Pakistanis about my research topic, the most

often asked questions were about how much money is
made at the Shrine and what it is spent on. It is rather
surprising that despite all the news about the Shrine and
the fact that the Auqaf Department is obliged to make
its budget transparent (which does not mean that it is
easy to actually get the data), no journalist has seriously
taken up the topic of what the money is spent on. The
expenditure of the Data Darbar zone itself is misleading
as can be seen in the simple fact that the institutions
one would normally count as charitable, e.g. the hospital
and the madrasa are not part of the zone but financed
directly by the Auqaf Department. The social welfare
expenditure within the Shrines budget only includes the
Jahez Fund, the industrial school, the scholarships for

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the sajjada nishins and a small help centre. This amounts

to 7 per cent of the expenditure and only 1.8 per cent
of the income of the Shrine. If the hospital and the
Markaz-e-Muarif Aulia (madrasa, library and research
centre) are included, the amount spent on social welfare
in comparison to the income of the Shrine is around 50
per cent (see Table 2).
Table 2
Income and expenditure of social welfare institutions at Data
Darbar in 2007/2008, run under the Auqaf Department
Institution

Income

Data Darbar Zone

Social Welfare (Data Darbar Zone)

Data Darbar Hospital

Library, Madrasa, Research Centre

Total

169,130

Expenditure
30,623
2,925

2,705

70,798

171,835

110,369

6,023

In thousand rupees.
Source: GOP 2011.

Table 3
Income of Data Darbar Zone in 2007/2008
Income Source

Rent from Shops

Lease Money

Donation Boxes
Shoe-Keeping
Misc.

Total Income
In thousand rupees.
Source: GOP 2011.

Income

3,020
210

Income Percentage
1.8

0.1

136,100

80.5

6,500

3.8

23,300

169,130

13.8

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Besides the income from donation boxes (80 per cent)

another important source of income is the shoe-keeping
contract (13.8 per cent) (see Table 3). The contract for
shoe-keeping is given to the highest bidder in May or
June of every year in a secret auction. All interested
contractors can submit a sealed envelope with a number to
the administration and the highest bidder will be awarded
the contract for the following fiscal year. The profit for
the contractor then relies on the number of visitors and
the ruthlessness of his staff. The price specified and fixed
by the administration for the shoe-keeping is two rupees
per person. However, most shoe-keepers try to at least ask
for a ten-rupee note or in some cases, as with foreigners
coming to the shrine as tourists, they will ask for as much as
thousand rupees. Should they be caught by the management
for overpricing, the fine can be up to two thousand rupees.
In order to counter the overpricing, the administration has
set up metal signs at the entrances clearly stating the price
for shoe-keeping. However, one often finds these signs
blocked by a conveniently hanging plastic bag or by other
objects. The atmosphere between the shoe-keepers and
the management is often tense and complaints about the
shoe-keeping are regular. Some of the staff, especially those
working in the management have therefore requested that
the Auqaf Department employ staff on a regular basis to
do the shoe-keeping. The idea has been repeatedly rejected,
most likely because everybody knows that the money gained
from the contract could not be earned when all visitors paid
the two rupees. The shoe-keeping thus is an example of a
clash between the financial interests of the department and

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149

the interests of the visitors and the management. It has

been solved by outsourcing not only the service (and the
contractor pays his staff less than what they would earn as
civil servants), but also to some extent the small scale fraud
on which the high income from the shoe-keeping is based.
Once again this shows how important the financial aspect
of administering the Shrine is.
The focus on financial surplus is reflected also in the fact
that the Zone Administrator often has a background that
has little to do with administering a religious site. Instead
he is often recruited from the Board of Revenue of the
government of Punjab as was the case with one of the more
controversial administrators in charge during the time of
my research.
Looking in more detail at the donations made to the
Shrine, it will become clear that the attention given to the
Shrine as a source of income for the Auqaf Department has
implications also on the way it is managed.
When the money from the cash boxes is counted the
amount is written into a record book for each note and coin
size individually. It is therefore possible to see exactly how
much money was donated, e.g. in five hundred rupee notes
in the two or three days prior to any counting day. The data
that was available to me was one such record book starting
with the 4 July 2007 through to the 22 December 2008
including a total of two hundred and five money countings.
The first and most obvious question to ask is: When are
the donations made? There is little surprise here, since

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throughout the year only one peak in donations is visible,

that at the time of urs. The money from urs is counted in
the three days after the festival has ended, donations during
the month of urs increase with approximately 60 per cent.
Looking at the smaller timescale of the week, there is more
variation. The three counting days, Monday, Wednesday
and Saturday reflect three different parts of the week.
The Monday counting includes donations from the
weekends (Saturdays and Sundays).
The Wednesday counting includes only days from
working days with no specific religious implications
(Mondays, Tuesdays).
The Saturday counting includes donations made
at the days of the week most important religiously
(Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays).
When comparing the income for the three parts of the
week, on an average the share is 42 per cent for the
Saturday counting, 32 per cent for the Monday counting
and 26 per cent for the Wednesday counting.48 This reflects
my own as well as the administrations impression that the
number of visitors is by far the highest on Thursday nights
and for the juma prayer on Friday followed in importance
by the weekend, especially Sunday. When looking at the
relationship for individual weeks however, sometimes the
weekend was not as important and its share even lower
than that of the weekdays without religious implications.
This strongly supports the view that outside of the time of
urs, visitors are to a very large extent from Lahore or day

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151

visitors from the villages around it, while weekend visitors

from further away make-up only a small proportion, a
fact also reflected in the relatively few hotels around the
shrine.49
When I entered the numbers from the record book into
a database I was particularly interested in how far there
would be variations in rhythms when comparing different
note sizes, e.g. donations made in 10-rupee notes and those
made in 5000-rupee-notes. While the note size does not
necessarily reflect the economic class of the donator, to
some extent it does. Most of the lower income groups will
simply not be able to make a donation of a 5000-rupeenote because it is an amount equivalent to two months
of income. It is also rather unlikely that even if money is
put aside regularly to then make one large donation, that
this would be one large note. Likewise the probability that
someone from the upper class donating 1000-rupees will
do so in 10 or even 100-rupee notes is rather small. If we
accept that the proportion of note sizes gives an indication
of the economic status of the donors, the numbers for
different counting days, times of the year, etc. could point
towards different rhythms between rich and poor when it
comes to visiting the shrine. However, there was almost
no difference in the overall proportion of note sizes for
different countings. The economic status can thus only play
a very minor role in determining when someone comes to
the shrine.
The overall proportion can however give a hint towards
the general economic status of the visitors. If we look at

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the numbers of notes/coins for all sizes it is little surprising

that the coins and notes of ten rupees or less make-up more
than three quarters of the total number and the combined
number of notes of five hundred rupees or more do not
even make-up 1 per cent. This gives an indication that the
large majority of visitors are from the lower or maybe the
middle classes. The predominance of the 10-rupee note also
reflects a common practice of placing this particular note in
the box when making a wish to the Saint. When looking
at the actual income of the notes the picture obviously
becomes reversed, although the 10-rupee notes still makeup one of the largest proportions with approximately 30
per cent of the income, the same as that of the 100-rupee
notes. What is revealing however is what happens to the
large notes of five hundred, thousand and five thousand
rupees. While not even making up 1 per cent of the number
of coins and notes, they provide almost 20 per cent of its
income. That one 1000-rupee-note is worth as much as a
hundred 10-rupee-notes is a very trivial fact. Translated to
the language of profit maximization however, it means that
one visitor donating a thousand rupees is worth as much as
a hundred visitors donating ten rupees. It would be wrong
to assume that all inside the administration think like this,
but given that money is counted three times a week and
increasing the revenue of the Shrine is a central aim for
the Zone Administrator, it should be clear that the idea
that it is financially much more beneficial to increase the
number of rich visitors than to facilitate the poor will have
crossed peoples minds a number of times. Looking at the
overall policy of the Auqaf Department for Data Darbar, it

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

153

is clearly a shrine designed not only to facilitate the poor

with food and free medical treatment, but also the rich,
with a clean space, air-conditioned mosque and ablution
area and even a car park. No other shrine known to me is
so easily accessible by car, and can be visited spontaneously
at any time of the year and day by people who need security
personnel to protect them.
5.2.4Day-to-Day Decision-Making

Decisions made at Data Darbar have far-reaching

consequences for a large number of people: First of all,
because of the high number of visitors directly affected;
and, secondly, and this should be emphasized again, because
of the role model the Shrine has become for other shrines.
Decisions at the Shrine can be divided into two kinds: those
that are done within the administration and management
on a daily basis and those that are done together with other
institutions as well as political and private sector actors and
deal with long-term changes for example to the architecture
of the place. In the coming section I will deal with the first
kind only, describing how decisions are made and why they
are made the way they are. The question of what kind of
understanding of Islam those people have who are involved
in the decision-making process will also be examined. The
long-term decisions will be dealt with at the end of this
chapter when all actors influencing the Shrine have been
presented.
Officially, all decisions are made by the Chief Administrator
Auqaf who is represented at the Shrine by the Zone

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Administrator Data Darbar. However, both these positions

are rarely held for more than a few months or one year by
the same person. They therefore rely on other people as well
as institutions when making decisions and it is this process
that we now turn to.
As mentioned, anybody with a request to the administration
or a complaint will first be directed to the managers office
or, in his absence, to the Chief Executive Officer. On
almost all occasions, the manager or chief executive officer
will decide the matter, e.g. by giving a warning to the
shoe-keeper a complaint was made about. Any technical
problems will be directly passed on to the subdivisional
officer or, outside the office hours and if action is needed,
to the electricians or plumbers directly. In cases that
involve criminal offences like theft, the manager informs
the police officer in charge of the police chowki (station) in
the basement of the shrine. In most cases I witnessed, the
dispute was about overpricing for shoe-keeping or between
a gatekeeper and a family because the family wanted to visit
the Shrine together. Until 2008 it was common that the
womens side of the Shrine was reserved only for women,
while the male side was not as strictly reserved for men
but open also to women when accompanied by their male
relatives. Since this has been changed, many women still
protest at the gates and some go further to complain to
the manager.
If a situation occurs in which the manager feels obliged
to discuss a matter further, he will in most cases turn to
the chief executive officer first. He will then decide if

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

155

it is necessary to consult the Zone Administrator. This

very rarely happens because more important requests are
done via an official letter to the Zone Administrator. The
handling of correspondence follows strict rules. Whenever
a letter is received it is opened by the office assistant. The
office assistant has his office right next to the chief executive
officers office. He shares his office with the record keeper
and the rent clerk. All incoming and outgoing letters are
registered by the record keeper. The incoming letters are
read by the office assistant who then gives his opinion
based on the law and the policy of the Auqaf Department
and writes it on the letter, before it is handed to the Zone
Administrator. In many cases, the matter will be discussed
among the staff of the administration in the surrounding
offices. While it is still the Zone Administrator who
makes the decision, given the great number of letters and
requests, he will in most cases follow the opinion of the
office assistant. On an everyday basis, the Shrine can thus
be said to be run largely by the mid-scale officers working
between the Zone Administrator and the executing staff
like electricians, plumbers, security guards and khadims.
5.2.5Religious Identity and Competing Ideologies

One of the most common misperceptions about the

administration of the Shrine is that those working there
are pure bureaucrats, with no spiritual attachment to the
Shrine as compared to the former caretakers. On paper
this assumption is true, given the few religiously educated
employees and the fact that everyone else is a civil servant

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with a higher education, e.g. in economics or management

studies. However, if we look closer at the employees
backgrounds and reasons for working at the Shrine, the
picture changes.
Many of the employees have actively sought a job at the
Shrine waiving their personal pay scales and taking a job
with a lower income because most have a long personal
relationship with the Shrine and the Saint. A very
common reply to my question why someone works for
the administration, the head office or the madrasa, was:
Officially I work for the Auqaf, but in reality I work for
Data Sahib. The majority of the employees are Lahoris
from the middle and lower classes. Their faith in the Saint
is strong and all consider the Shrine to be sacred, although
they give different reasons for this, as we will see later.
Toget an idea of how the Saint shapes everyday life, a story
told to me as a joke by one of the managers will be of help:
One month ago, I was taking my motorbike from my house
to work. My wife looked at me from the window. Two boys
came to me on a motorbike, one of them pointed a gun at
me and said, Whatever you have, give it to me. I gave him
my money. Then he said, Give us more. What is that? (He
shows his ID card from the Auqaf Department). It is my ID, I
work at Data Sahib. They said, Give us your mobile. So I
gave them my mobile and said Please, just give me the SIM
card. So then the boy asked his friend, Is it a cheap mobile?
He said, Yes. And the boy gave me back my mobile. Then I
said, Now please give me back my money as well. (Laughter
in the office). So there was a 500-rupee note and some small
notes and coins, and they gave me the change, saying, But

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

157

please, when you go to Data Sahib, pray for us. So, I said, Yes,
and in in my heart I said, I will pray for your arrest. (Again
laughter). So I saw the number plate, and some people said,
Give the number to the police for investigation. But I said,
I was saved. Data Sahib saved me. That is enough.

Most of the employees with the exception of the highest

authorities would regularly tell such stories and in almost
all cases some small wish made at or near the Shrine was
being fulfilled. These stories are typical not only for the
staff but also for many of the shopkeepers or for that matter
most Lahoris. While those not working at the Shrine
mostly narrate stories at the centre of which are big wishes,
or life-changing situations, the employees see all their daily
life deeply affected by the closeness of the Saint. A typical
example of the simple and small things that are attributed
to the Saint is this:
Yesterday, I was thinking, Oh, I am thirsty. I would like to
have a cup of tea. Then I looked around and realized that
there were a lot of people in the room and thought, Oh, this is
going to cost me a hundred rupees. Then, in the next second,
Khalid here (pointing at one of the khadims in the room) came
and said, Do you want a cup of tea?50

When it comes to the reason why they work at the Shrine

however, the stories have the same life-changing situations
at the core, typical for devotees of a saint in Pakistan.
What is specific about Data Sahib however, is that many,
who otherwise refrain from believing in the interference in
their life by saints, would narrate such stories. This applies
especially to those bureaucrats holding a higher position,

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e.g. as officers, and normally having had an education

either in one of the elite colleges of Pakistan or overseas.
Apart from the officers at the Shrine employed under the
Auqaf Department I have also come across this in other
institutions for example in the police or in the public health
sector. I will quote a story told by one such officer, working
just below the ministerial level, who translated the Kashf
al-Mahjub. After having introduced myself and the subject
of my book, he said:
It was a very strange incident. Basically I am a surgeon. When
I came out of my operation theatre, one of my teachers,
who has translated this book into Punjabi, carried a bag.
So I asked him, Whats in the bag? He said, You wouldnt
understand. You are a young man, a smart boy, working in a
female college, so you dont need these religious things. But
you enjoy the worldly things. I said, Just tell me what are you
carrying over your shoulder. He said (showing the book), I
have translated the Kashf al-Mahjub from its original treatise
in Persian into Punjabi. So he donated a copy of the book
to me with his autograph and he moved off. All of a sudden,
he came back and asked, Why dont you translate it into
English. I answered, Sir, I am a worldly person, enjoying my
life, having fun with the girls. I am just a handsome boy and
involved in these female affairs. No, he said, Turn towards
that (the religious) side. I just sort of let him go and didnt
think about it. So a very strange thing occurred that night.
I saw Data Ganj Bakhsh in my dream. And he said to me,
Look, at my shrine. I have a lot of people who come to me
and say their prayers there and then they go back. And I have
chosen you to translate this work. And a very strange thing
happened the next day when I woke up. I remembered the

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

159

face of Ali Hujwiri I had seen in my dream, and it was there

in the newspaper, because one of the columnists had written
an article about the saint and had made a visual image of the
saint. So then I said to myself, I will translate the book. I
needed a computer for this, so I went to one of my friends who
recently had started a business selling computers. I was very
fond of buying things on instalments. So I had been with him
and many times I had asked, Please give this nice computer,
with laser printer and scanner, to me on instalments. And
every time he said, Go away, I dont sell things on instalments.
Only for cash. Very strange. I got out of my car and went to
his office at Hafeez centre (a shopping centre specializing in
computers and mobile phones). And I asked him again, Please
give me that computer on instalments. And all of a sudden he
agreed. It was a shock. And another strange thing happened.
I went to my sister-in-law and she had a Quran, written and
published by the Saudi government, written in English. I said,
I want that. On many occasions before I had requested some
books, but she always refused me. One day I went to her house
and requested the Quran and she gave it to me. I was again
shocked. Allah made ways for me. [] A time came when
I was fed up with this book, I was so tired, so tired, because
I am a surgeon, and therefore have a lot of things to do. A
very strange thing happened. I stopped translating. I said I
am too tired to do this. So, after I stopped, (it was a Sunday,
so, after having breakfast with my family, I was sitting in my
study room. All of a sudden, I felt that I have been struck with
something and I have become stern, mesmerized, and I am
sitting like this. And somebody came into my study, passing
his hand over my body, and said, Why are you so worried?
Why are you not taking any interest? Its not a difficult task.
We have entrusted you with this work, so go and carry it out.

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I said, I am tired of this work. I cant do it. And he said, No,

you should do it. And then, all of a sudden, I felt a green
chaddar being thrown around me. And a moment later, when
I looked up, there was nothing. So that night I went to my
hospital. One of my friends, whose father used to serve at the
gates (of the shrine), worked there as a razakah (volunteer).
This friend came to me, holding something in his armpit,
and said to me, When the chief came to me, the chief of the
darbar, he said, Go and give this to someone who is very dear
to you, and then your face came before me. And I thought I
would give it to you. When he took out the chaddar, it was
the same chaddar that was wrapped around me that morning.
It is still lying with me in the house. Therefore, after that, I
translated daily.51

Many of the employees at Data Darbar point out that they

do not belong to the Barelwi school of thought and do not
venerate the saints. However they would then tell a story
like the one presented below to show how they were drawn
to the place by higher forces.
L: How did you start working here (at the shrine)?
I was not coming here. I was not willing to do a government
job here, nor at this level. But times changed and some
benefits from my fathers service were due. To collect those
dues, I started my journey as an applicant for the Auqaf. []
It was 1996 when he passed, I tried at that very time to apply
(at the Auqaf Department) but it did not work. So I studied
computer sciences instead and worked as a primary teacher.
[]. So I tried again in 2002, when I was left with no option
of working anywhere else, because I had no home and was
living with my brother-in-law. I tried to ask for the benefits of

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161

my father, and within three or four months I was lucky to get

a job and I decided to come to the job. I was being appointed
here, on a deceased quota. But this was at maximum a scale
five. Even though I was educated for a higher scale, they
could only take me on scale five. So I started my career here.
And one thing more. My father served for sixteen years here.
And from the date of appointment, I do consider that this is
actually not a coincidence. I was not willing to come here.52

The last part of this conversation needs some explanation.

The employee makes clear again that he had no intention
of working at the Shrine but that some higher force in the
end made him start his career here and that the connection
came because his father had been working at the place
for such a long period. Although a specific case in that
not many employees have family that already worked for
the Auqaf Department it is a typical story as well, in that
almost all employees considered it to be an act by God
(or in some cases the Saint) that brought them to work
in this particular site. In one conversation with one of
my most important informants, I asked him about why
he put so much trust in me and gave me all his valuable
information without knowing how I would represent him
and his colleagues in my work. In one of my first meetings
I had told him that I came to study the Shrine because a
professor who had once lived in Lahore had suggested to
me that this was a place worthy to be studied. In his answer
he now made the following connection: First, he asked,
How many people live in Germany? I answered, about
eighty million. Then he said, Look, out of eighty million,
only one came here to study this place. And you were sent

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here by a person who had himself been at this shrine many

years before. So, it is clear that it was not the professor who
sent you here but that he was simply sent by Data Sahib
to send you here!
The direct connection thus established between my
research and the Saints intention is just one example of
how much of what happens at the Shrine is traced back to
the Saint. The conception that lies behind this is one we
would normally associate with folk-Islam, giving agency to
deceased saints, one of the most controversial issues in the
discussion about saints in Pakistan. Like everyone else, the
staff at the Shrine are well aware of the discussion about
saints, pirs and shrines and their legitimacy. As Katherine
Ewing puts it:
Urban Pakistanis have been a target of various ideological
formulations associated with colonialism, economic
modernization, scientific secularism, anti-Hindu communalism,
and a range of Islamisms, to name some of the most salient.
Individuals positionings vis--vis these ideologies locate
them within the broader discourses of modernity and Islam,
constitute them as subjects within a contested discursive field,
and give them specific, labelled identities such as uneducated
and traditional, Wahhabi, modern. Many are in occupations
such as government service that were directly shaped by the
colonial bureaucracy and its successors. In such settings, and
from other sources such as television and newspapers, the
individual is exposed to competing ideologies that differ in
their authority, authoritativeness, and power to convince.
(Ewing 1997, 93)

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

163

The background of the staff as well as their positionings

vis--vis these ideologies is very diverse. Thus when
religious matters are discussed, for example whether it is
the shrine or the mosque at the complex which is more
sacred, these topics are hotly debated. On several occasions,
a discussion had at its root the question whether or not the
Saint was actually still alive or could still grant wishes or be
helpful in other regards. I often found that at some point
the question was raised to one of the older or higher ranked
officers like the manager or the chief executive officer to
then finally decide the matter. The position often taken
by these officials is one which reflects the general position
on Islam by the Auqaf Department and can probably best
be described as a moderate modernistic approach, saying
that the Saint is indeed dead and cannot interfere directly
in worldly matters anymore. This does not mean however
that the Saint is not highly respected. The following
conversation with one of the younger employees in the
administration, critical of many Sufi practices, shows how
many inside the administration try to somehow stick to the
official modern position and to reinterpret the importance
of the Shrine within this ideology:
You remember last Friday, when we were debating here?
There were two groups. One group almost worships the
saints and the other group says that these are honourable
persons, pious persons, the saints, but they have no authority
to be worshipped. Actually, I am from that second group, but
my family are from the first group. So I have been suffering
ideologically. They term me as Wahhabi, although I am not
a Wahhabi. I do not raise my hand during prayer as they do,

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but I have been termed as Wahhabi by my family because I

am saying the authority to give and the authority to take only
belongs to the mighty Allah. Not to these saints. These are
actually pious persons, the saints.
L: So then why did you come here (to work at the Shrine)?
Look, Allah says to his Messenger (peace be upon him), we
have raised the communication about you. That means that
up to the judgement day he will be praised and he will be
honoured and obeyed. This is actually the saying of God that
he (the Prophet) is being honoured as the Messenger, the
last Messenger of God. And all the persons who follow the
Messenger, the same promise is valid for them. This is the case
here. If the saint would not have been following the Prophet,
he would not have become famous. So he has actually been
following the Prophet and I do believe he is a pious person
and saint. He was very near to God. So, as a friend, he was
liked by God. He loved God and God loved him. So, as a
friend of God, I do respect all the saints. But, with all due
respect, I have some reservations as well. As friend, they have
a capability to do something, but they are not themselves the
Almighty Allah. Some authorities only belong to Allah, not
even to the Messenger, e.g. to honour someone and take the
honour from somebody. And many (other) things. He (Data
Sahib) has passed away and after 966 lunar years he is still
alive in the memories of people. He is still known. As far as I
know, the rulers of his time are totally unknown, even though
they were rulers, who worked hard, were very strong, and
possessed armies and treasures. But after 966 years nobody is
there who knows them. But this (Data Sahib) is a personality
that has been remembered almost one thousand years. So this
is the story. [] you have seen that the citation of the Quran

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165

is going on and for this, we do consider that the citation of

the Quran is a holy thing and it is our belief that the reciter
is being blessed and all the area where the recitation takes
place is being blessed. Not a single minute when people are
not reciting (here at the shrine). All the time. [] Why it is
not happening at someone elses grave, there are thousands of
graves? Why is it happening here? It means that this person
was very close to God. And I would like to share one thing.
I have seen many people, very strong, coming here as an
employee. But I did not understand why they left. Some of
them had the Chief Administrator in their palm as we say
in Urdu. [And the reason is] that this is actually a place of
honour. If anybody is coming here with some bad emotions,
then after a number of visits, he will leave. Maybe because of
a fight or any other reason. But this is actually only my view,
you may have some other views.53

The relatively long monologue, which I encountered

when questioning my counterpart about his reasons for
working at the Shrine, exemplifies that many do face
questions about the legitimacy of the veneration of saints
regularly, for example by their families and friends and
to position oneself within this discourse is an important
part of the religious identity. In the above example, my
interlocutor was facing the problem of having, on the one
hand, to clearly distinguish himself from folk Islam and
the concept that the Saint can be worshipped, while on
the other hand, wanting to sustain the sacredness of the
space itself. Instead of relating the sacredness to the fact
that the Saint lies buried here, he used the practice of the
recitation of the Quran to make the site qualify as sacred,

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thus clearly emphasizing the adherence to formal Islam.54

At the same time however, the Saint is described as a pious
person, respected and remembered for his closeness to
God, and it is this that makes people recite the Quran at
this specific place continuously. In the last passage, he then
ascribes the positive influence on people to the place rather
than the Saint himself, as most people would normally do.
Katherine Ewing has dedicated a whole chapter (1997,
93127) in her work Arguing Sainthood to the everyday
arguments encountered in Lahore about exactly these
kinds of questions. Her findings reflect those found by
myself among the staff of Data Darbar. Ewing gives a
number of examples, in which people have to deal with
contradicting positions towards tradition and modernity
within the discourse on Sufism, pirs and shrines and often
find themselves in contradictions between their ideological
stance and the actual practices, e.g. when visiting a pir
for treatment of a disease, perceived as a curse given by
a neighbour. In one of her examples, a women named
Zahida is visiting the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh despite
criticizing the tradition of visiting shrines in general and
seeing herself as a modern, reformist person. The example
is particularly interesting because it reveals the special
position the Shrine has among Lahoris:
In her narratives about visiting the shrine of Data Sahib,
Zahida struggled to resolve the tension between her modern,
reformist identity, for which being a proper Muslim means
avoiding shrines, with practices that are inconsistent with
that position. Her experiences with Data Sahib contradict
her modernist view of reality. Yet she never tried to explain

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167

away the miracles brought about by Data Sahib []. This is

because her image of the saint is of a powerfully significant
other whose presence she has experienced in ways that defy
explanation within the framework of a modern reformist
ideology. Through the work of narrative, she seeks to protect
only one pir, Data Sahib, from the accusation of fraud. She is
supported in this by his prominent role in state ideologies of
national identity. (Ewing 1997, 125)

The staff at Data Darbar largely find themselves in a

similar position. Some take the detour via Muslim practices
recognized by all Muslims, such as the recitation of the
Quran, in order to upkeep the shrines outstanding position.
Many also refer to the common perception presented
earlier, that Data Sahib was the person bringing Islam
to the city and region. In addition, most follow a line of
argument, or rather a narrative, like that of Zahida. They
point out the extraordinariness of this particular Saint,
while denying other saints this status. A very popular
narrative to exemplify this is the story of a Lahori who is
said to have fallen ill while performing the hajj. Even being
at the centre of the Islamic world he called home and bade
his brother to go to Data Darbar to pray for his health!
To summarize the ideological position of the staff at Data
Darbar, we can say that there are a variety of positions
ranging from those (few) who openly conceptualize the
Saint as a living pir and those who completely deny
any power of the Saint to interfere in reality. By far the
largest part of the staff positions themselves in between,
and in many cases formulate a more formalistic, modern

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and reformist position when talking about their religious

identity while at the same time being deeply interwoven
with practices that contradict this position. This reflects
and further strengthens their position as mediators between
state and people, between the official positions of the Zone
Administrator and the Auqaf Department, whose ideology
they share and the visitors of the Shrine, whose practices
they also share or at least can relate to. While this is an
obvious contradiction to a Western observer, most of the
staff have few problems with this position. For them it is
barely a reflection of the outstanding character of the Saint.
5.3Other Institutions Within the Data
Darbar Complex

When looking at the Shrine as a space imbued with meaning

by a number of people and groups as well as a space in which
Islam is produced and reproduced in a certain manner, it is
not enough to look at the administration of the Shrine only.
There are numerous institutions based at the Shrine which
in general are perceived by visitors and to some extent also
by the Auqaf Department as being part of it. First and
foremost this applies to the library, madrasa and research
centre in the basement of the roof garden. The library used
to be run under the administration of the Shrine and the
librarian is still officially employed under the Data Darbar
Zone. The library as an institution however became part
of the Markaz-e-Muarif Aulia in 2002 together with a
newly established madrasa and research centre. Apart from
these three institutions there is a police station as well as a

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169

number of offices which are used by institutions from the

Government of Punjab as well as one used by a Pakistani
NGO. In the coming sections I will first deal with the
madrasa, library and research centre in detail, then with the
Punjab Muttahida Ulama Board, before giving only a short
overview of the other institutions since these are less often
associated with the Shrine, and as we will see, also have
less influence on the discourse on Sufism and Islam and
thus are of minor importance when considering the Shrine
as a central place for the participation in that discourse by
state actors.
5.3.1Madrasa, Research Centre and Library

A central institution at many shrines and auqaf properties

in precolonial times has been the religious school or
madrasa. In the years since 9/11, a common perception
has evolved that most madrasas are breeding grounds
for Islamic extremism. Despite there being estimates
that less than 1 per cent of the madrasas in Pakistan are
teaching extremist courses (cf. LAMB 2005), because of
their prevailing image, madrasas are almost completely
omitted from the discussion on social welfare institutions
in Pakistan.55 In contrast to their negative image,
Most madrasas, however, play an important role in educating
children in countries where the state lacks the resources to
fund universal primary education and where parents lack
a choice of schools. The better-resourced madrasas often
provide free food and accommodation for the children of the
poor, and employment for a significant minority who go on

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to work in madrasas or mosques. Where they combine secular

and religious education, Islamic schools can play a potentially
important role in providing poor children with a basic primary
school education, and as a significant social safety net. (Clarke
2007, 90)

This is especially true for Pakistan and, in a speech given on

12 January 2002 only few months after the attacks on the
twin towers, General Pervez Musharraf tried to highlight
the charitable character of many madrasas. At the same time
he felt the need to articulate (most likely to comfort the
US government) that a stronger control of the madrasas
was necessary and that his government would take up the
challenge:
These schools are excellent welfare set-ups where the poor
get free board and lodge. In my opinion, no NGO can match
their welfare aspects. [] Very few madaris, I repeat very few
of them, are under the influence of politico-religious parties
or have been established by them. I know that some of these
promote negative thinking and propagate hatred and violence
instead of inculcating tolerance, patience and fraternity. []
Have we [] forgotten the teaching of revered personalities
of Islam like Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh, Hazrat Lal Shahbaz
Qalandar, Fareed Ganj Shakar, Bahauddin Zakria, etc. Was
Islam spread by them through force and coercion? No. They
preached Islam by personal example. [] We must restore
that status of madaris to what it originally was. (The New York
Times 2012)

Musharraf probably did not have in mind the establishment

of new madrasas, but rather the control of those in place.
However, given that he himself had named Data Ganj

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Bakhsh, it is hardly surprising that within the same year a

madrasa was opened at the Shrine, one of many that were
to be established under the Auqaf Department. According
to the former Chief Executive Officer (who has earlier
also been the Khateeb Imam at Data Darbar and is the
current Director of the Ulama Academy), the madrasa was
a logical step after the complex was finished and there
was space available. From the beginning, the madrasa
was conceptualized as a way of influencing the national
discourse on Islam and Sufism, a fact supported by the
parallel installation of a research centre, which publishes a
quarterly journal on Sufism. That the library also became
part of the new set-up was also a logical step, given the
much closer association to the madrasa and research centre
in comparison to the administration of the Shrine, as well
as the adjacent locality of the three institutions.
Formally, the madrasa evolved out of a normal school
situated behind the Shrine complex. The driving force,
according to the Principal of the madrasa, was the Director
General of the Auqaf Department at the time, Dr Tahir
Raza Bukhari. The madrasa runs a curriculum under the
Tanzim al-Madaris al Arabiyyah, an umbrella organization
of the Barelwi branch of Islam. The organization was
founded in 1959 by a number of ulama in order to counter
the growing influence the Ayub Khan regime tried to
establish with regard to the madrasas. The Barelwi sect
is today considered one of the largest groups of Muslims
in Pakistan, although many people are counted into this
category without naming themselves Barelwi, simply

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because of their rural background and connection to

the veneration of saints particularly associated with this
sect. Barelwis are generally considered to have aligned
themselves with the British and still remain the most
conformist Islamic group vis--vis the state authorities
(Malik 1996, 5). In the long struggle for recognition of
their education within the nation state, they have achieved
success in that that their certificates today are treated like
BA and MA certificates in Islamic Studies or Arabic from
the universities. Thus students from the Jamia Hujwiria,
as the madrasa inside the Shrine complex is called, do in
fact pursue a later university career, doing their MPhil or
PhD at the Punjab University. The concessions the Tanzim
al-Madaris al Arabiyyah had to make in order to get their
certificates acknowledged is that part of their eduction must
follow the national curriculum and a number of subjects
are taught that were not part of the education a madrasa
earlier offered, during the colonial and precolonial periods.
Students at the Jamia Hujwiria thus study mathematics
and English alongside the traditional subjects of Islamic
jurisprudence (fiqr), Hadith, Quran or Arabic.
The madrasa offers up to eight years of teaching
(MA level). The total number of students varies between
150 and 200. On average, thirty-five students are admitted
each year after having to compete in a written examination
and later in an oral examination. There are about twice as
many applicants as vacancies. Most of the students come
from rural Punjab, although there is also a large group
from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. According to the staff

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at the madrasa, most of the students come from very poor

families, a fact that is evident also from a high number of
ninety students relying on a scholarship from the Auqaf
Department. The madrasa is free of cost, and food as well
as accommodation is provided. Some students come from
richer families and, according to the Principal these are
mostly children of pirs, sajjada nishins or other traditional
religious authorities. The fact that this group sends their
children to this particular madrasa is surprising, given that
it is clearly associated with the state through the Auqaf
Department. What seems to be the reason is the good
reputation of the madrasa. According to the Principal, the
reasons are as follows:
The first reason is, I think, that the all the bureaucrats and
politicians have been omitted here. They are not allowed
to interfere. And we are running this institution just like a
private institution. If we follow the process and the method of
those other government institutions, it would fail. This is the
major factor. We just ask them politely, Please dont interfere
in this madrasa and let us run this madrasa by ourselves. If
you interfere, it will be a failure. [] The second thing, is,
I think, the good faculty. For example our Hadith teacher is
well-known in Pakistan both for his writing and teaching.
L: What is the reason that these high-level teachers come here, even
though the madrasa is still so young?
The first reason is the attachment to the Shrine of Data Ganj
Bakhsh. Because, we feel better, our teachers feel better. They
also get recognition through the saint. Whenever someone
asks them, Where are you teaching?, they can say, I am
teaching at Data Sahib Jamia Hujwiria.56

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The attachment to the Saint and Shrine is also a factor

for the students to choose this madrasa over others.
The independence given to the madrasa by the Auqaf
Department, as emphasized by the Principal, can be
explained by the Auqaf Department always being in
need of ulama who generally favours its decisions.57 The
independence has its limits however, as is evident from
the fact that those in charge at the madrasa are officially
employed by the Auqaf Department. Additionally, it is
ensured that no teaching will take place that does not
conform to the curriculum approved by the Tanzim
alMadaris al Arabiyyah and thus is well-known to the
Auqaf Department. The only variance in the curriculum is
that the teachers include the teachings of Ali Hujwiri into
the overall education at the madrasa, thus also giving it a
distinguished position.
The teachers give support to those students, who, parallel
to their studies at the madrasa, are pursuing a BA at a
university. For this and for the private studies the afternoon
is normally used, while the regular classes are set between
8 a.m. and 1 p.m., in the time between morning and
afternoon session there is time for prayer and lunch.
A fact exemplifying the importance given to the madrasa
by the Auqaf Department is that when the madrasa was
established, qawwali was still played throughout all of
the Thursday mornings and afternoons. As this made
teaching almost impossible, since the classrooms are in the
immediate vicinity of the sama hall, the Principal of the
madrasa requested that the qawwali be restricted to the

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afternoon. When I asked him if he had discussed this with

the sama committee in charge of organizing the qawwali
sessions, he replied that he had only informed the head
office of the Auqaf Department and they then informed
the sama committee of their decision.
The madrasa occupies the largest part of the lower
basements offices. There are several classrooms, offices
for the Principal, as well as a kitchen where the food is
prepared. The Principal pointed out to me that the location
is unsatisfactory in his view, especially because of a lack
of fresh air. However, when he suggested to the Auqaf
Department to shift the madrasa to a building outside the
complex, it was denied on the basis that the connection to
the Saint should be evident. This was supported by both
the teachers and the students. During one of my interviews
with the Principal, teachers came to him discussing the
possibility of being able to sleep within the premises during
the week. For this, additional space would be needed and at
the time of research some teachers had been given rooms
near the police chowki on the other side of the sama hall.
To accommodate the one hundred students within the
complex, several rooms are used as a hostel. There is no
furniture except for lockers for personal belongings, which
are shared by three students each, as well as a mattress per
student to sleep on. The students are often teenagers or in
their early twenties and for many the community of the
sleeping room has to substitute for a family, since most
cannot go home more than two or three times a year. Many
spend their free time at the Shrine and some even work

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for the administration as tea servants or doing similar small

jobs. Those who do get a scholarship get three hundred
rupees per month, barely enough money to save up for a
trip home. Life for the students therefore takes place almost
entirely inside the Data Darbar complex, a fact none of the
students found pitiful but was rather a source of pride.
In group interviews with the students of the madrasa, most
named the connection to the Saint as the main reason for
choosing this particular madrasa. They also pointed out
to me that Lahore was generally considered the centre
of education in Pakistan. All of them considered their
education at the Shrine to later qualify them for becoming
leading figures in religious regards in their home villages.
This role is to some extent already exercised when going
back to the villages for holidays or on weekends. As
practices associated with Islam in rural areas often differ
considerably from the ideological positions taken by ulama
and subsequently also taught at the madrasa, the students
regularly face situations when being home in which they
feel the need to raise objections to certain practices. One
example given by a student was that his sisters regularly
painted their nails and later performed their ablutions.
He pointed out to them that the varnish would make
the nails impervious to the ablution and they changed
their behaviour accordingly. The fact that this seemingly
insignificant practice was actually changed points to the
authority the education from the madrasa holds in rural
society.

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In many cases, the students were confronted with practices

that were less easily changed, e.g. marriage or burial
ceremonies. One would expect, however, that when the
students are finished and take up a post as imam in a local
mosque and become older, their influence would grow. In
this way the madrasa does reach out into the rural areas
of the province, although of course with a very limited
number of students. To some extent the students can
become multipliers of ideas, however, as is the case with
those students coming from a family with local authority. It
seems ironical that the class that has been deprived of much
of their income and power through the nationalization of
the shrines now sends their children to a madrasa run under
the same department responsible for the nationalization. In
this case it is clearly a sign of the outstanding position of
the Saint giving his name to the madrasa.
The madrasa is run under what is called the Markaz-eMuarif Aulia, an institution with its own budget under the
Auqaf Department. The annual budget is approximately
6 million rupees (or 3.5 per cent of the Shrines income)
of which 50 per cent is used on the madrasa, 40 per cent
on the research centre and 10 per cent on the library. The
budget does not contain any payment of rent, electricity
or other services to the administration of Data Darbar.
The librarian is still paid through the budget of the Data
Darbar Zone.
The library includes more than ten thousand books and is
frequently used, especially by the students of the madrasa.
Books are mostly about Islamic topics. The research centre

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consists of one research officer as well as an assistant. Their

main task is to edit a quarterly journal called Mujallah
Maarif-e Auliya (one could translate this very loosely as
Progress in the Knowledge of the Sufis). The Maarif-e
Aulia deals with questions of Sufism and usually consists
of articles by leading ulama from Pakistan. In several
special issues, the teaching of Ali Hujwiri is dealt with; in
one issue, a number of different prefaces to editions of the
Kashf al-Mahjub were collected, including those written
by the Chishti sheikhs Shahidualla Faridi and Wahid
Bakhsh Rabbani. All articles are written on request by the
research officer to the ulama. He also has the authority
to make changes to the submitted papers. According to
the officer, his main objective is to make sure none of the
articles contain sectarian content. The official editor of the
journal is the Director General of the Auqaf Department
while the Minister and Secretary of Auqaf and Religious
Affairs are the Patron in Chief of the journal. The Auqaf
Department also edits a number of books like new editions
of the Kashf al-Mahjub or works by and about other saints
of the province. One of their sale points is situated at the
Shrine complex next to the car parking entrance.
Apart from editing the journal, the research officer is
also in charge of organizing speeches held in the mosque
during the three days of urs by leading Islamic scholars of
Pakistan. The topics are chosen by him and typically have
titles like the Prophet in the light of the Kashf al-Mahjub,
the companions in the light of the Kashf al-Mahjub or
recently also terrorism in the light of the Kashf al-Mahjub.

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179

While the journal is sent out to all Pakistani universities

as well as to leading ulama, the speeches during urs have
a completely different outreach. While the qawwali also
played during the festival can only be heard inside the sama
hall, the speeches are amplified to the whole of the complex
via loudspeakers and can thus be heard by several hundreds
of thousands of people. In this regard, the research centre
and madrasa play important roles in spreading the Auqaf
Departments positions on key concepts in Sufism and
Islam more generally through the teaching of Ali Hujwiri.
5.3.2 The Punjab Muttahida Ulama Board

Besides the madrasa and research centre, there is another

institution that has an office at the Shrine and participates
in the discourse on Islam in the Punjab and to some extent
the whole country. The Punjab Muttahida Ulama Board
(United Scholars Board) was established in 1992 and
is essentially a board that censors both literature against
Islam, and literature that promotes sectarianism. The
chairman is appointed by the Chief Minister of Punjab.
According to one of the assistants to the chairman, most
books that are dealt with in the board meetings are from
the Ahmadiyyas. That some known ulama publishes books
containing sectarian passages is rather rare. Instead, the
authors are often unknown, trying to make a name for
themselves with strong statements that often have a
political background. The number of books reviewed by the
board can vary greatly as do the number of meetings in a
year. On average around three or four meetings are called

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during a year and around twenty books are discussed. The

number can be much higher during times when two sects
start accusing each other and a large amount of writing
takes place. Only books published in the Punjab can be
censored for all Pakistan, otherwise books can only be
censored for the Punjab. No similar board exists in the
other provinces. Since December 2010, the chairman of the
board has been Muhammad Aminul Hasnat also known as
Pir Aminul Hasnat Shah Sahab. He is revered by many as
a mystical master, but has also been influential in politics
and is considered politically close to Nawaz Sharif.
Before Aminul Hasnat was posted as chairman, the
chairman was Sahibzada Fazal Karim, appointed in 2008.
He is also the Chairman of the Sunni Ittehad Council
(SIC). The Sunni Ittehad Council was established as an
alliance in May 2009 by a number of Barelwi groups and
parties including the Jamiat-e Ulema-e Pakistan-Markazi
( JUP-Markazi) and the Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat ( JAS) as a
force to counterterrorism.58 It was a reaction to a number of
attacks on shrines since 2005. The Sunni Ittehad Councils
major activity is to organize rallies and conferences against
terrorism, the first of which took place in August 2009,
when several thousand people openly protested against
terrorist attacks. In April 2011 the SIC also held a
conference in which several hundred muftis from more than
fifty countries declared a fatwa against suicide bombings
(Khan 2011). Already earlier had the Chairman Sahibzada
Fazal Karim declared suicide bombings as haram (forbidden
by Islam). In view of its activities, it is little surprising that

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181

the US government backed up the SIC financially in

the beginning. However, they later stopped their support
because the SIC held rather anti-American positions on
drone attacks, the Raymond Davis case, and the fact that
the SIC called for pro-Mumtaz Qadri59 rallies. The SIC
played an important role in organizing the long march
from Islamabad to Lahore as a reaction to the Data Darbar
suicide attacks. In this long march that was to end at the
Shrine, a strong criticism of the Punjab Government was
articulated. When Sahibzada Fazal Karim refused to cancel
the protests, he was forced to resign his post as Chairman
of the Punjab Muttahida Ulama Board.
This shows how close the political control over this
institution is and consequentially also on the discourse of
Islam in the Punjab and to some extent in all of Pakistan.
That the office was moved to the Data Darbar Complex
can be seen as another sign of the importance the place has
for promoting national unity within the realm of religion.
5.3.3Police Station and Other Offices

Even though we have seen that the madrasa today has

a lack of space to accommodate its teachers, at the time
of completion of the complex at the end of the 1990s,
almost the entire basement underneath the roof garden was
available, because its original designation as a shopping
centre was given up. The space was gradually given to
institutions not part of the Auqaf Department but of other
departments of the government of Punjab. Although these
institutions play almost no role in the representation of

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Islam at the Shrine, they have contributed to a process of

turning the Shrine into a social centre for the city, which
will be dealt with in detail in the next chapters.
The largest institution based at the complex not run under
the Auqaf Department is the Data Darbar Police Chowki.
It is a substation of the Lower Mall Police Station with
approximately forty officers working in three shifts. The
chowki is situated underneath the south-eastern corner
of the roof garden and can be reached either through the
car parking basement or through the southern entrance to
the sama hall and basement (see Fig. 9). The station was
established on request by the administration of the Shrine
after the completion of the new complex. The management
faced the problem that, whenever they detained persons at
the Shrine, they needed to either bring this person to the
Lower Mall Police Station or wait for the police to come to
pick them up. In the meantime there was no possibility to
incarcerate the person. With the establishment of the police
chowki it is now very easy for the management to detain
persons because they can be directly brought to the police
station without any delay. In the chowki, there are four cells
available, one is reserved for females. The management
and administration have no authority to execute arrests in
the surrounding streets of the Shrine where most of the
criminal activities take place and the presence of police
officers was strongly requested for this also. As we will see
when dealing in detail with the surroundings of the Shrine,
the police forces far outnumber the officers working in
the Data Darbar chowki and it is not unusual that several

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183

hundred officers are on duty around the Shrine from

Lower Mall Station as well as some of the other nearby
stations like the police station inside the Bhati Gate. The
chowki also serves as a temporary resting place for those
officers officially working under a different station. With
the growing threat of terrorist attacks on the Shrine the
number of policemen stationed directly around the Shrine
has increased to almost two hundred and the chowki plays
an important part in catering for their needs. Despite the
large number of police officers around the Shrine and at
the entrances, inside the complex one almost never sees any
officers except to pay tribute, for prayer or to participate in
rituals at the Shrine. The Shrine itself is clearly seen as a
self-governing space and as will be clear when dealing with
the terror attacks on the Shrine on the 1 July 2001 the
administration has little trust in the police to adequately
deal with the specific problems inside the complex.
Next to the police chowki, on the eastern side of the sama
hall, are two offices used for the deputy district officer of
the Department of Social Welfare, Women, Development
and Bait ul-Mal of the government of Punjab (Bait ul-Mal
is literally the House of the Currency, and refers to the
money given for charitable purposes to the state). Up to
seven employees work here in all fields of social welfare
giving out small amounts of money for persons in need.
The office is difficult to find and there are few people
coming here for help, because, as the district deputy officer
pointed out, their financial resources are very limited.
Another office is situated under the north-eastern corner

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of the roof garden, where the Child Protection and Welfare

Bureau of the Government of the Punjab run an Open
Reception Center (ORC). According to their official
website, the incoming children are welcomed, interviewed,
facilitated, reassured and provided basic facilities motivating
them towards the reintegration with their family and
society (GOP 2012b). In practice, one assistant officer is
sitting in the office and a number of employees are working
as street workers in the area around the Shrine. Whenever
they find children unaccompanied both inside or outside
the Shrine these are brought to the office, registered and
either sent straight back to their parents or to the main
office, situated near the Shalimar Gardens in Lahore. Since
many children run away from home because of domestic
violence it is not unusual that they ask not to be brought
back to their families.
Next to the offices of the Child Protection Bureau, an
NGO called Akhuwat (a term derived from the word
mawakhat meaning brotherhood in Arabic) has its office.
Akhuwat is a microfinance NGO active in almost fifty
cities in Pakistan through eighty offices. The office at the
Shrine was opened in 2004. The NGO gives out credits
monthly from ten thousand rupees to fifty thousand rupees.
The process of approval for a credit is complex, including
visits by NGO workers to the home and neighbours of the
applicant. Applicants need to have at least two guarantors
to make sure that the monthly payments can always be
met. Because the offices of the NGO are responsible only
for applicants from a particular area, all applicants at the

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185

office in the Shrine live near it. According to the manager

of the office approximately half of the successful applicants
also have a relation to the Shrine and sometimes associate
getting the credit with the Saint.60
5.4Long-Term Decisions and Private,
Political and Civil Society Actors

In the previous sections, most offices and institutions

based at the Shrine have been introduced. Those that have
been omitted are committees working under the Auqaf
Department, namely the Religious Purpose Committee
(RPC), Sama Committee and Jahez Committee, as well as
two offices, one for the Parliamentary Secretary of Religious
Affairs and Auqaf, and the other one the office by the
Punjab Muttahida Ulema Board Chairman. Additionally,
there are actors involved in long-term decision-making at
the Shrine that do not have any institutional relationship to
it, most importantly private donors. Lastly there is a part of
civil society working at and around the Shrine which, unlike
the SIC, do not have offices but still are very present at the
Shrine. Those working in cooperation with the Data Darbar
administration are three groups of organized volunteers. In
the coming sections all of these actors will be introduced
in order to understand who has an influence on decisions
made at the Shrine that go beyond the daily routine.
5.4.1Political Influence

The most important institution to make long-term

decisions at the Shrine is the Religious Purpose Committee

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(RPC). It consists of the highest officials within the

Auqaf Department, the Secretary and Minister of Auqaf
and Religious Affairs, the Director General and the Data
Darbar Zone Administrator, the Commissioner of Lahore,
the District Coordination Officer (DCO) of Lahore as
well as politicians with a particular interest in the Shrine.
The members are officially chosen by the chairman of the
committee who in turn is chosen by the chief minister of
the Punjab. In recent years, the chairman has been Ishaq
Dar, finance minister of Pakistan and a leading figure in
the PML-N with close ties to Nawaz Sharif also through
the marriage of their children.
The main task of the RPC is to organize the urs festival,
especially to coordinate the efforts by the city authorities
and the Auqaf Department. The major topic in recent years
has been the security concerns. The RPC decides on any
architectural changes at the Shrine. Normally this means
that the committee simply approves whatever proposal is
made by the Auqaf Department. There have also been cases
in which the committee, and particularly the chairman
himself, have actively promoted their own ideas, e.g. to
make a plan for a further enlargement of the Shrine to the
east and south, which would include building an underpass
for the Lower Mall Road in order to use both the street
and the Data Darbar park in front of the Shrine. One of
the most important decisions made in the last years by the
RPC was to more strictly divide the genders at the Shrine.
Because the RPC mainly consists of politicians and
because becoming a member is easy as long as one is close

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187

to the chairperson, the number of members has over the

last decade continually expanded until it reached twentyfour in October 2011 and it was decided that this was no
longer feasible. The chairman therefore decided to make
those members with a particular interest in a specific field
responsible by naming them as convenor to the respective
field but no longer members of the RPC. They now only
have to report to the RPC while otherwise being in charge
of their respective field. There are, e.g. convenors for
Milad (celebration of the Holy Prophets (pbuh) birthday),
the volunteer work and langar. In this way, the Sama
Committee, formerly responsible for the organization of
the qawwali session on Thursday afternoons and during urs,
was also changed to become a subcommittee of the RPC
with a convenor. Shortly after however, the convenor was
made solely responsible and is thus in charge of the qawwali
at the Shrine. The convenor is a politician who also owns
a hotel and has a personal interest in the qawwali sessions.
Another important committee is the Jahez Committee.
Jahez is an Urdu/Hindi word for the dowry given by
the brides family to the family of the bridegroom at
the time of marriage. To lighten the financial burden
of the marriage, especially for the poorest families with
several daughters, the Auqaf Department has established
a Jahez Fund from which every month around thirty
families receive ten thousand rupees. The members of the
committee are recommended by the RPC and are mostly
women. Additionally the Zone Administrator is part of the

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committee as an advisor and the accountant of Data Darbar

is the official treasurer of the fund.
When looking at the political influence at the Shrine, the
RPC and the Jahez Committee are most important. As these
committees have members from the highest political ranks,
it was impossible to take part in any of the meetings held.
Interviews were also repeatedly rejected mostly on the basis
of time constrains, as well as with the comment that for any
inquiries the administration would be the proper contact.
While the politicians involved make sure to be seen in the
official rituals at urs and thus actively seek the association
with the Saint, their direct influence on the administration
is downplayed as can be seen in the fact that not a single
member of either the Jahez or RPC lists their membership
in their official profiles on the government websites. Why
this is so will become evident from an interview with a
member of the administration talking about the Jahez
Committee and the political influence on the Shrine. It
will be reproduced here in detail because it summarizes the
difficult relationship between the administration and those
politicians who take an active part in the Shrines matters:
The members of this committee are all very well-known
political figures. For example, the Chairperson for this
committee is Madam Zakia Shahnawaz, she is the Advisor
to the CM (Chief Minister of Punjab). The Vice-Chairperson
is the wife of the MNA (Member of the National Assembly)
Pervaiz Malik from the PML-N, and all the other persons,
members of the Jahez Committee are also very well-known
figures with a well-known political background.

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

189

L: But all from one party?

Yes, presently, I think they are all from one party. One is the
wife of a minister in the Government of the Punjab, one is
an MPA (Member of the Provincial Assembly), another is the
wife of the cousin of Mian Nawaz Sharif and Mian Shabaz
Sharif, and so on so it is over politicized, which is now
proven to be the case, because they dont have time for this
purpose, they hand over this work, their own work to their
political workers []
L: But what is the political power behind giving this woman
money and this woman not?
Actually when they send their people to have an inquiry
whether they (the applicants) are deserving or not, they go
there and they ask about their economic condition as well as
their political views. So they recommend or reject on the basis
of different things, including the political views. Secondly,
there was a woman, a MPA from Shahdara (a suburb of
Lahore). All the other women of the committee decided not
to give money to the persons she had recommended, because
they were of the opinion that she was obliging her jurisdiction
area. (Later in the interview, it became clear that all women
did this, but that in her particular case it was spelled out
because she was politically isolated).
L: Ok, so women from her area will be given a yes.
Yes. Its about making votes, point scoring. Actually this is not
a different story from how it was in the past.
L: So in the past it was just a different party.
Yes, that was the time of the Qaid e-Azam, Muslim League
Qaid e-Azam (PML-Q). That was a good time, in the sense

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that the (Zone) Administrator wrote to the government, to

the Chief Administrator and he wrote to the Governor as
well, that this very chairperson is using this charity (the Jahez
Fund) as a political instrument.
L: So there was a complaint actually.
Yes we complained.
L: Who did?
The Zone Administrator himself, he was a very strong person
and very straightforward.
L: And did something happen?
Yes, the CM called her and he said, Take it easy. Do not over
politicize. Politicize, but not too much (laughter). These are
actually some hidden items.
L: But very important. You see, on the one hand I dont share all
the criticism raised against the Auqaf Department, on the other
hand I also need to understand where the system is not working
properly.
I would like to clarify, that this is not part of the system, the
laws and regulations of the Auqaf Department. We have a law
saying that this charity should NOT be used for any political
activity.
L: Ok, but in the set-up of the committee there is one person who
decides upon all the members of the committee, so this is a structural
problem dont you think?
Yes, of course, but this is the political influence. Nowadays we
are facing a heavy political influence. From the bureaucracy,
no person can perform their job without any influence. Thats

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

191

the way we are having a heavy influence here at Data Darbar

and we are having a heavy influence at the head office of the
Auqaf as well. This is the story: the RPC is being chaired
by a very prominent figure of a political party. When he
was the chairperson in the past he was very influential. And
nowadays he is again the chairperson of the RPC, and he
is even more influential. Thats why, when he is using his
influences, he is appointing some political figure, because he
is a political person, and he knows political workers very well.
And he believes them more than anybody else, thats why. Its
not actually his bad intention. He knows that these are very
good people, they are working for the party very sincerely
so he considers them to be very sincere persons and gives
them the responsibility. But these persons are actually very
busy persons, they chip their responsibility to someone else
who is less responsible. Thats why these problems are faced
by the department and the management [] (To give an
example) The form (application form for the Jahez Fund) is
being filled out by the applicant, and then these applications
are distributed among the members of the Jahez Committee.
They are from different areas and backgrounds, with a
single political background, but with different economic
backgrounds, and coming from different families. And they
are giving the recommendations. But it is actually her (the
members) workers who write it and she then just signs. And
secondly, the chairperson signs, without writing or giving it
any more considerations. There is one thing that I would
like to tell you about, which I have seen and feel very guilty
about. You see here (on the application form) a number which
is from the ID card from the daughter whose marriage is
to be arranged. This was actually an attempt to discourage
below-eighteen-years-of-age marriages. Thats why we (the

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administration) decided to give this form only to those people

who have their daughters ID cards. We refused hundreds
of people who did not have their daughters ID cards. But
I have seen in the meeting (of the committee) there was a
member, who said, I know this very applicant and she has
two daughters and they do not have ID cards. And the chair
person said, Give them, they are poor. I consider, among the
thousands I have refused, hundreds must be very deserving.
But this is actually the difference.
If a member of the Jahez Committee does not take care of the
decisions of the Jahez Committee and even the chairperson
does not take care of the committees decisionsit means
there is no justice.
L: And it is not their own money they are giving away.
Yes, and secondly she was there to backup a few people whom
she knows. If somebody has no backup, then what will she do?
Deserving people are actually those people who do NOT have
any say (contact) to the higher officials.61

It is clear that the administration does not in general see

political influence as a problem. Those figures who take an
interest in the Shrine and have a long-term commitment
are seen as rightfully being part of the committees. Ishaq
Dar for example, is respected for his decisions by the
administration because he is personally devoted to the
Saint. In the preparation of the urs held in February 2010,
several employees at the Shrine told me how he had given
a small address to some of the staff stating that in a dream
Ali Hujwiri had told him to take care of some particular
tasks at the Shrine during urs, e.g. that one person should

Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes

193

be appointed to only take care of the car parking by the

VIPs. This kind of statement, on the one hand, clearly
produces another kind of authority than just being the
chairperson of the Religious Purpose Committee. On the
other hand, it associates him with the staff at the Shrine
who in a similar manner conceptualize their work as being
done for the Saint rather than for their official employer.
The practice of giving positions to those that are politically
close is not generally considered a problem. The problem
arises when these people do not share the same devotion
to the Saint and even further pass on the responsibility to
their own political workers. What started out as an interest
primarily private and religious thus becomes reduced to a
political dimension.
The differentiated view on these issues already points to the
fact that the political influence is a constant in the work
by the administration, a fact further emphasized by the
statement that none of the bureaucrats can take decisions
without being influenced, although here it refers mainly to
the highest officials. It also becomes clear, that the reaction
to this influence varies with the Zone Administrator in
charge of the Shrine. One of the major weaknesses on the
part of the administration in their relation to the politicians
who have influence, is the fact that the Zone Administrator
changes so often. Therefore only few have the knowledge
to overview the long-term decisions as well as establish
the full trust and support of their own employees. Out of
the last administrators, many named only two that had
the strength to keep political influences at bay. One had

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held the post for almost four years before being given the
post of deputy commissioner of Lahore, the other one is
a reoccurring figure in the post, being reassigned the post
after the terror attacks of 2010. It seems that while the post
is often assigned to a person who has earned his merits in
another government department and most likely has an
administrative background, they often have little experience
in administrating a shrine. At times of crisis, the Auqaf
Department eventually resorts to someone who can actually
handle the task. The staff at the Shrine remember these
administrators well, and most of the positive developments
are ascribed to their times in office.
In an interview with one former administrator, he said that
Data Darbar was a place of pure gold, when reflecting upon
the possibilities the place offered to help the poor. It is in
a similar manner that the employees comments about the
Jahez Committee should be understood. The committee
has the power to help those in need. Instead, the fund is
misused for political gains. This kind of political influence
is the one which is particular upsetting to the staff at the
Shrine because they are the ones in daily contact with
persons in need as is emphasized when my informant
pointed out that among the thousand I refused, hundreds
must have been deserving. Given that about one hundred
applications (counting only those who actually can provide
the ID card of their daughters) are handed in every
month, the statement is not an exaggeration. While in the
case of the Jahez Committee, the interests of its political
members to some extent are in opposition to the interest

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195

of the Shrines administration, it is important to note that

most politicians involved at the Shrine make use of it in a
manner the administration abides by, and, as we will see,
are looked upon either with admiration or are smiled upon.
The political influence through the RPC and the Jahez
Committee is largely controlled by the chairman of the
RPC. One can therefore say that it is this post that has
the most influence on long-term decisions at the Shrine.
He is also one of the few politicians holding a post
associated with the Shrine who is regularly seen at the
Shrine. A number of other political posts have an entirely
different character, the most remarkable example being the
Parliamentary Secretary of Religious Affairs and Auqaf,
whose office was inside the Shrine complex opposite of the
offices of the RPCs Chairpersons office and the Minister
of Auqaf s office (see Fig. 21). After having visited the
office a number of times without seeing anybody else other
than an assistant to the Secretary, it was pointed out to
me that the post was established only to make someone
happy from the PML-N. When asked how often the
MPA appointed to this post is actually in his office, the
answer was he was seen the first two days after being
appointed and hasnt been here since. At the time of my
last fieldwork in September 2012 the office had therefore
been closed.
The relationship between political figures and the Shrine
has four major dimensions. The first and most obvious
dimension is that of using the Shrine as a stage, in order to
associate oneself with the Saint, as well as with the masses

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which, as we have seen, builds on a tradition dating back to

the time the Shrine was taken over. The second dimension
is that of taking an influence on the Shrines development
because of a personal relationship. An important aspect of
this is that by taking a long-term interest in the Shrine,
the way Islam is represented will also be influenced by the
worldview and concepts of Islam held by the politician. A
third dimension is to make use of the Shrines financial
resources in the form of the Jahez Fund to promote ones
career. The fourth and least important dimension is that
of simply honouring oneself with an official post at the
Shrine.
For the long-term development of the Shrine, it is the
first two dimensions that play the largest role. Number
one because the attention given to the Shrine by the
politicians furthers its position as a national monument.
A national monument that represents both the state, its
people and in this case religion and therefore also is a
potential battleground for diverging ideologies as we will
see when dealing with the suicide attacks on the Shrine.
Its importance in turn also adds to the second dimension,
that of taking influence on the Shrine, a form of power to
represent what Islam is. As we will see, this power, however,
is not only shared among the Auqaf Department and
politicians like Ishaq Dar, but also by a number of private
actors and, although with very limited access, to parts of
Pakistans civil society.

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5.4.2Private Actors Influence

197

Aside from the political elite, one important group

having influence on the activities at the Shrine and
its architectural changes, are private donors. There are
donors for all kinds of services and with various financial
backgrounds. To mention an example, Habib Electrics is
a company providing lighting for large-scale festivals and
governmental events, for example when foreign dignitaries
or officials are welcomed at the royal fort. During the
three-day urs celebrations and up to three weeks before
the event and one week after, the large company provides
their services exclusively to the Shrines beautification, and
all the services are done as a donation. Another example
is a company from the construction sector who provides a
donation in the form of cash put into one of donation boxes
directly in front of the grave in an envelop on a monthly
basis. Apart from these donations there are a number of
large-scale donors from the industrialist elite of the country
who are listed by the administration and can be called if
any investment at the Shrine has to be made for which
there is no budget. This can for example be a new carpet
for the mosque courtyard. If such a case occurs, the donors
are simply called by phone and in most cases, provide the
financial help immediately. In regard to the beautification
of the Shrine there are almost no limitations as to what
the administration can ask for. As was the case with the
political figures, these persons were also reluctant to give
interviews. One said on the telephone that he wished
his donations to the Shrine to remain secret and not to

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appear in a book about the Shrine. Another problem for

interviewing was the unavailability of these donors because
they spend most of their time in Saudi Arabia, in either
Mecca or Medina. This gives an indication as to how
devoted these donors are to their faith. The influence of
these centres of Islam are most evidently in the latest largescale architectural changes to the Shrine, which also shows
in which way the large-scale donors have an influence on
the Shrine and its visitors.
As mentioned, the Shrines roof garden originally was
perceived as a recreational area. For most of its existence,
it was common for visitors to meet here, sometimes have
discussions, but also eat and sleep here. This has long been
a thorn in the side for those officials within the Auqaf
Department who would like to clean the Shrine from all
activities not directly associated with proper Islam. It was
therefore common that the security guards would regularly
walk through the roof garden and wake-up those who were
sleeping. With the higher security arrangements it was
also more difficult to take food inside the Shrine and both
sleeping and eating in the garden had been reduced to a
minimum, requiring that security guards repeatedly had
to be on duty in this otherwise relatively unimportant and
less crowded area. When in 2009 a leak was discovered in
the roof above the sama hall, one of the large-scale donors
offered to pay for the complete roof garden to be covered
in marble. The official reason that the RPC approved
this major change to the architecture and accepted the
donation, was that the marble would be easier to clean.62

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199

Unofficially however, it was clear that one large marbled

roof would be much easier to control. Another important
aspect of the new design is that it is a further step in
denuding the shrine of anything local or typical for South
Asian Islam. Although before the architecture also did not
reflect local traditions, the roof garden was one of very few
elements that at least functionally was conceptualized to
compensate for a traditional aspect of South Asian shrines.
While in the amendments to the original design under Zia
ulHaq, Islam as an international, cross-border religion was
emphasized by taking in elements of other regions of the
Islamic world, like the minarets in Turkish style, the latest
changes clearly resemble styles taken from the central sites
of Islam in Mecca and Medina. Straightening out the inner
divisions of the roof garden and turning it into a single
marbled courtyard clearly resembles the architecture of
the Holy Prophets (pbuh) mosque in Medina. How far
the donors go in their attempt to architecturally link the
Shrine to these centres can be seen in the latest proposal to
replace the marble of the Shrines mosque courtyard with
a whiter marble like that in the courtyard/roof of the Holy
Prophets (pbuh) mosque, because it reflects more of the
sun and therefore stays cooler in summer. The orientation
to Mecca and Medina when it comes to the architecture
of the Shrine is shared to some extent by the politicians
involved, often also having close connection to the Arabic
world as is the case with Nawaz Sharif, as well as by some
of the highest officials in the Auqaf Department. Besides
Data Darbar, another remarkable example in this regard
are the changes done at another large shrine, that of Bari

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Imam, just outside of Islamabad, where a new complex is

constructed with domes resembling the famous green dome
of the Holy Prophets (pbuh) mosque.
The influence by the richest part of Pakistans society
happens both directly in the form of making donations
as well as indirectly as the Shrine is changed in order to
accomodate this financially very important group. Aside
from making donations, rich visitors also sometimes
complain about practices around the Shrine to which the
administration then reacts, for example by picking up drug
addicts and driving them out of the city. Another important
influence are those private actors who have established civil
society institutions at the Shrine to which we will now turn.
5.4.3Civil Society Actors

Civil society can be defined very broadly as the sphere in

between the private household and the state (cf. Gellner
2009). At Data Darbar, civil society means all those groups
and institutions not run under a government department
but organized in some manner and on a level higher than
the household. This includes loosely organized groups,
work colleagues providing langar on a regular basis, groups
of disciples of a particular sheikh visiting the Shrine, but
also whole villages deciding to rent a bus for a visit to the
Shrine as well as all the groups visiting the urs together,
many of whom set up temporary camps during the festival.
There are also a number of institutions based at the Shrine.
These are social welfare institutions, for example two
NGOs, one providing help for children that have run away

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from home, the other one providing microfinance credits.

Additionally, there is a very large group of volunteers at
the Shrine. The influence of these actors on the Shrine are
largely of social character and cannot match that of the
political or private actors mentioned earlier when it comes
to actively changing either the set-up of the Shrine or its
rules.63 In this short section, I will look at that part of civil
society that has a political influence on the administration
of the Shrine. The social aspect of the civil society will be
dealt with in detail in chapter six.
Some of the civil society actors primarily concerned with
social welfare do at times play a political role as was the
case after the suicide attacks in 2010. As a reaction to the
attacks, security at the Shrine was further tightened. This
included the prohibition of bringing langar inside the
complex. This posed a problem for a number of groups
providing langar on a large scale every Thursday night.
Various groups therefore came together to complain about
the situation and the conflict was finally resolved by making
it possible to take langar inside the complex in plastic
containers which were checked by metal detectors. In part,
because of this conflict with a large and important part of
the regular visitors to the Shrine, the Zone Administrator
was replaced. Thus, in this rare case it becomes clear that
although not centrally organized, the visitors to the Shrine
can at times be united and become a political force.
The last group that to some extent has an influence on
decisions made at the Shrine are three organizations of
volunteers that were established by private devotees to the

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saint in the years after the nationalization. These volunteers

amount to a total of more than three thousand persons,
who help the administration, especially at the times of urs
and on Thursday nights and therefore are included in the
preparations for urs as well as in the security arrangements.
Overall, the political influence of civil society at the Shrine
is low, especially given the number of groups and number
of members within them.
5.5Qawwali

Qawwali does not play an important role for the main

questions of this research, except that the fact that it has
been reduced in length and been positioned within the
basement exemplifies the point that qawwali, seen by some
as un-Islamic practice, has been marginalized along other
cultural expressions of Sufism, like the lighting of oil lamps
which was shifted from within the roof garden to more
remote places. The qawwali sessions do play an important
part in another regard however, and that is the centrality of
Data Darbar in regard to the Pakistani shrines. Centrality
can be defined as a surplus in functions and is always
a relative indicator. In the case of the qawwali sessions,
it is particularly evident because most of the groups say
that they come to Data Darbar as a kind of promotion.
Many convenors of qawwali at other shrines, but also for
private functions and weddings come to Data Darbar to
make bookings with groups. The set-up of the sessions
is particularly suitable for this. While qawwali sessions at
other shrines often have two or three groups performing for

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203

half an hour each, sometimes also for several hours through

the night, the set-up at Data Darbar is entirely different.
Between 12 a.m. and 1 p.m. the secretary of each group gets
a time from a timekeeper who strictly controls the length of
the performance. Each qawwali group has only about five
minutes to perform and this way more than fifteen groups
can be seen in a single afternoon session. The groups are
often well-known and many of them are Darbari Qawwals
(court singers) associated with specific shrines. They give
concerts all over the world and given the fact that many
earn only between 1,000-10,000 rupees at the Data Darbar
sessions, divided by a minimum of seven group members,
the performances here are clearly not about the money.
Besides the booking opportunities one singer also pointed
out that having performed at the Shrine is an important
achievement in the career, saying We come here to get a
stamp from the saint.64
Most of the songs performed are not about the Saint, but
about the Holy Prophet (pbuh) and his family. Those that
are about Data Sahib often have at their centre one of the
major narratives of the Saint, like the visit and appraisal by
Moinuddin Chishti. Some also point out the similarities
between the Shrine and the Holy Prophets (pbuh) mosque
in Medina by focusing on the pigeons found in both places.
The Holy Prophet (pbuh) is normally also at the centre
of the final prayer that officially ends the qawwali session.
The focus on the Holy Prophet (pbuh) reflects the general
developments at the Shrine as we have seen for example in
regard to the most recent architectural changes. It is also a

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result of the relatively low number of qawwalis about Data

Sahib as compared to other saints. When trying to buy
qawwalis about the Saint in the surrounding markets there
was not a single compilation exclusively about the Saint
and in most cases the CDs and DVDs included only one
or two qawwalis about Data Ganj Bakhsh.
In comparison to other shrines, the qawwali sessions at
Data Darbar are very restricted, both timewise as well as
in regard to dancing, the use of drugs and the mixing of
genders, since no women are allowed into the sama hall
(few exceptions are sometimes made). The sessions have
however, gained a new function as a platform to gain access
to other sessions and bookings making them important for
the qawwali groups despite these restrictions.
5.6Managing urs

When looking at the Shrine as a place of representation by

the various groups presented in this chapter, one needs to
give special attention to the annual urs festival, celebrating
the death and thus communion with God of the Saint. Urs
festivals are a central part of South Asian Islam. Many Sufis
travel from mela to mela, from festival to festival throughout
the year and because these festivals are a focus of attention
on the shrines both by visitors as well as the media, the urs
of Data Ganj Bakhsh is the single most important event
for the Auqaf Department and the administration of the
Shrine. It is central in understanding how the Shrine is
used to represent the states views on Islam.

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Held from the 18th to the 20th of Safar (the second month
in the Islamic calendar) every year, the festival itself is only
three days long. Preparations start months before however
and the anticipation of the event is tangible at the Shrine
from the time of the ghusl 65, the ritual washing of the tomb
forty days before the urs. Ghusl in itself is an important event
and the ritual is also often attended by high political figures
such as the Chief Minister. It is, however, not accompanied
by the many other activities typical for urs and it rarely
receives extensive media coverage. The very first step in the
preparations is the request for the release of the urs fund
by the Zone Administrator who normally also requests an
increase in the fund from the Auqaf Department due to
the general rise in prices.66 The next step is to organize
the meetings by the RPC in which the practical aspects of
the urs preparations and the coordination between different
institutions like the city police, the Auqaf Department and
the municipality are discussed. After this the chief guest is
invited. The chief guest has in recent years always been the
Chief Minister of Punjab. Being the authority under which
the Auqaf Department is run, this is also the most common
choice. However, sometimes the Governor has a closer
relationship to the Shrine and if the Chief Minister does
not persist to be invited, the Governor is the chief guest
instead. The invitation is officially sent out by the Chief
Administrator of Auqaf. In recent years, the Chief Minister
was accompanied by three to four of his ministers. Should a
federal politician like the Prime Minister or President request
to be the guest, he or she will be the chief guest instead.

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Also around a month before urs, the bidding for the

provision of food for the Auqaf Departments own langar is
advertised in newspapers. Langar is provided during urs by
the department as well as by a number of large-scale donors,
each with their own space in the complex. The next step is
to make the programme for the urs, containing the dates
and timings of all major rituals, the qawwali sessions and
the speeches held in the mosque. The programme is done
officially by the Director for Religious Affairs from the
Auqaf Department. The speeches held in the mosque are
planned by the research assistant and the timings for most
other rituals are planned by the Shrines administration. The
programme is then published in a small booklet as well as
its major points being printed on the urs poster. As the date
of the urs follows the lunar Islamic calendar, the printing
of the final versions of the poster and the booklet can only
take place when the moon is sighted and the month of
Safar starts. From then on there are eighteen days left till
the beginning of the urs. Around 3,500 booklets are printed
and up to 5,000 posters. The posters are then distributed
around the city by volunteers, while the booklets are kept in
several offices at the Shrine for visitors to pick them up. In
the weeks before the urs, many come to the Chief Executive
Officers office to ask for booklets and posters. The posters
are extremely popular and regarded as carrying baraka
(spiritual blessings). To gain a poster is therefore a question
of persuading the Chief Executive Officer or one of his
subordinates that the posters will be placed somewhere
where they will attract a large number of people. From the
more than 4,000 posters distributed to be placed all over

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207

the city, I have never actually seen one of them on a wall.

It is not unlikely that a lot of the posters actually stay with
the volunteers. Most often when I witnessed someone
approaching the administration with a request for a poster
they would simply say all posters were gone and handed
out booklets instead. Most visitors would still regard the
booklet as a valuable artefact. Despite being a relatively
easy task, the distribution of the booklets and the posters is
one of the main concerns of the administration in the last
weeks before urs because it means long arguments with a
large number of visitors requesting the posters.
Besides the booklet, there are also invitation cards produced
that are sent to VIPs, like the members of the different
committees, important Sufi sheikhs and important ulama
of the country as well as from abroad. About a week
before urs, the bidding for the provision of langar takes
place. At this time the decoration of the Shrine has also
started, carried out mostly by different donors and their
companies, but coordinated by the subdivisional officer
and his sub-engineers. During this time all the staff work
long hours and no one can take holiday in the time before
or during urs.
A small passage from an interview with one of the
subordinates of the Chief Executive Officer clearly shows
what the main concern is for the administration: Actually
as far as we (the administration of Data Darbar) are
concerned, we are strictly concerned with the chief guest
from his arrival until his departure. After departing him
we feel relaxed, because from our point of view, the mega

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event of the urs has been gone. In the present situation we

have a lot of concerns for the security situation, this is our
venue and we are very much concerned about the security
of the people and the chief guest.67
The stress level in the offices of the administration rises
in the days prior to the mega event. Once it is over, the
administration then takes part in the management, which
is in charge of all the other activities at the Shrine. The
management during urs needs much more personnel
than is normally available and apart from the staff of the
administration, additional staff is recruited from the head
office.
As part of the preparation of urs, a seminar is normally
held by the Auqaf Department in cooperation with the
Punjab University in honour of the Saint. The seminar
is held at the university and attended by the Minister
for Auqaf and Religious Affairs, the Khateeb Imam of
Data Darbar, the Director of Religious Affairs, officials
from the university, faculty members from the Arabic
Department and interested students. Additionally, special
guests are invited, in 2012 the President of Azad Jammu
and Kashmir. The seminar consists of a number of lectures
about the Saint and his teachings by the officials from the
Auqaf Department as well as by leading scholars of Sufism.
When I visited the seminar in 2010 it was well attended
by students and the media coverage was high. The seminar
serves as an important stage to raise the attention for the
urs in the public before it starts, and to represent again the
key views on Islam as held by the political establishment

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209

and the Auqaf Department. In recent years, the lectures of

the seminar have clearly highlighted the peaceful message
of Sufism which is taken up by the media as is evident from
a newspaper article typical of its genre:
Religious leaders should impart Sufi teachings to end terror,
suggests Sardar Yaqoob Khan
Lahore: (Wednesday, 11 January 2012) President Sardar
Muhammad Yaqoob Khan of Azad Jammu and Kashmir
(AJ& K) here yesterday at the inaugural session of two-day
Syed Hajver Tasawwaf Seminar organized in connection with
968th annual urs of Hazrat Data Gunj Bakhsh at Punjab
University, stressed the religious leaders to come forward and
impart knowledge on teachings of Sufism to the youth as this
could have been an effective way of overcoming terrorism
and extremism in the society. [] Speaking on the occasion,
the AJ&K president said that the charismatic personality of
Hazrat Data Gunj Bakhsh was a model for our guidance as
even people of other religions also respected him. He said
Data Gunj Bakhsh played a key role in guiding the masses
towards the path of peace and love with humanity. He was
of the view that Sufis played foundational role in spread of
Islam in the subcontinent. Referring to the present crisis the
country was facing despite being an atomic power, he said that
the enemies could never harm Pakistan due to the presence of
such pious personalities of Sufis. (Fayyaz Yaseen 2012)

All the speeches held when I was present had similar

content, mostly highlighting the Saints importance and
then making clear that his teachings should serve as a
guidance for all the Muslims of Pakistan. Thus even in
the preparation of urs, attention is directed to the teaching

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of Ali Hujwiri and his ecumenical and unifying views are

reproduced.
For many of the urs visitors travelling to the Shrine is a
pilgrimage. One visitor told me that even though he lived
in Lahore and could have reached the Shrine easily by bus
he decided to walk the whole distance because of urs. Most
visitors come in groups and carry with them a chaddar to
give to the Saint upon arrival. The chaddars can be huge,
sometimes being more than 5 metres wide and 7 metres
long and are carried by all the members while walking to
the Shrine. In front of the group drums are played and
passing pedestrians will often dance to the sound before
making a donation of notes thrown on to the chaddar or
sometimes given to the musicians. Thus days before the
urs, but especially on the day it starts, the citys attention is
drawn to the Shrine whenever such a group passes through
the streets, making themselves heard by the drums and
stopping traffic regularly with dancing.
Urs officially begins with the chaddar poshi (changing of
the prayer carpet) (Fig. 27). The ceremony is normally
scheduled for the afternoon of the 18th of Safar. For this a
fence is positioned dividing the Shrine into the area open
to the public; which is the mosque and mosque courtyard
and the ghulam gardish as well as the roof garden and the
southern veranda and south-eastern entrance. These areas
are kept empty and the chief guest can thus enter the
Shrine directly from the Lower Mall Road, walk through
the veranda and up to the ghulam gardish. The veranda
is also closed at the sides with carpets thus making it

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211

impossible for the ordinary visitor to see the chief guest

and the other participants of the chaddar poshi. Apart from
the Chief Minister and some of his cabinet, the Chairman
of the RPC, the Zone Administrator, Khateeb Imam as well
as the Chief Administrator Auqaf, and the Director of
Religious Affairs are present during the ceremony. Every
TV-station has its team to cover the event and thus the
ghulam gardish is extremely crowded despite being closed
to normal visitors. The ceremony itself is short and consists
of taking the old chaddars off, then washing the grave
and finally putting on a new chaddar. The covering of the
grave with the chaddar is associated with the covering of
the Kaaba in Mecca; it is what distinguishes the grave of
the Saint from other graves (Shahzad 2010, 250). After
the chaddar is changed, passages are read from the Quran
and after only about twenty minutes the ritual is over and
the guests leave through the veranda to the Lower Mall
Road where a large milk distribution place has been setup and is officially opened by the chief guest by drinking
the first cup of milk (Fig. 28). The milk distribution (dud
sabeel) is a tradition at the urs closely connected to the
story of how the cows of the farmers outside of Lahore
gave more milk because of the Saints intervention.
Farmers from outside the city bring their milk to the
Shrine during all three days of the urs to distribute it
amongst the visitors. Taking part both in the distribution
as well as in the drinking of the milk is an important part
of any visit to the urs and is considered to cure diseases.

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From the point of view of the administration, the major

activities during urs are the mehfil-enaat, the mehfil-e-sama
and the ilmi mehfil. Mehfil denotes a gathering in Urdu.
The mehfil-e-naat is a gathering in the mosque in which
poetry about the Prophet is recited. Mehfil-e-sama is the
name for the qawwali sessions taking place continuously
from the second day of urs until late into the last night (in
fact, when urs is officially ended with the isha (night) prayer
on the 20th of Safar, the qawwali is still played afterwards).
Ilmi mehlfil is the gathering of the Islamic scholars giving
speeches throughout all three days, mentioned before. All
of these activities are covered live by various radio and
TV stations. The ilmi mehfil is continuously broadcasted
via loudspeakers over all of the complex. Heard by several
hundreds of thousands of people, one can surely regard
these speeches as the most heard live speeches held on
Islam in Pakistan. It is therefore little surprising that the
topics of the speeches are given to the scholars by the Auqaf
Department through the research officer. The topics are
chosen to highlight the importance of the Saint and his
work, the Kashf al-Mahjub. The books ecumenical content
is used to give lectures on fundamental aspects of Islam.
The fact that speeches have titles like Terrorism in the
light of the Kashf al-Mahjub exemplifies the wide range of
topics. From the states perspective, urs is an ideal platform
to present a unified national religious identity through Ali
Hujwiris teachings, heard live by almost a million people
and broadcasted all over Pakistan. To further strengthen this
point, a comparison between the urs of Data Ganj Bakhsh
and other festivals in remembrance of saints is helpful. As

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Ewing has pointed out, at many shrines urs celebrations

were transformed from a largely religious festival into
more social and recreational events, where, especially in
the rural areas, activities such as agricultural and industrial
exhibitions and horse and cattle shows (Ewing 1997, 73)
take place (cf. Malik 1990, 76 and Malik 1996, 61). This is
still the case and Uzma Rehman (2009) describes how the
urs of Waris Shah, another important saint of Pakistan, is
a largely cultural event that even follows the local Punjabi
(solar) calendar instead of the Islamic (lunar) calendar.
Writing about another shrine she states: All in all, the
atmosphere during the annual urs celebrations at Shah
Latif s dargah is said to be more like a fair rather than a
religious occasion (Rehman 2009, 155). At first sight, one
could argue that the urs of Data Ganj Bakhsh is also much
more than a religious festival, a fair, with hundreds of street
sellers, temporary camps, music and dance. On a closer
look however, the activities supported and organized by the
Auqaf Department do not include any activities not directly
associated with either common Islamic practices or as is the
case with the milk distribution, directly associated with this
particular saint. While a decade ago it was still common
for circuses to appear during the time of the urs, such
activities have been banned from the surroundings of the
Shrine. The area around the Shrine is cut-off from traffic
almost a kilometre to all sides and no vehicles can pass
without the permission of the police. Inside this large area,
in recent years, it has also become more and more difficult
for the many temporary campers to continue their normal
activities. These include the consumption of drugs, very

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closely associated with urs festivals in general and normally

tolerated by the police, but in the case of Data Darbar has
been strongly fought against. Under the disguise of higher
security measurements, also the surroundings of the Shrine
have come under much stricter control by the state and in
fact, this is the case at many shrines in the country. That
the recreational character of the urs is to give way for a
more religious festival, as has been pointed out before,
can also be seen in regard to the qawwali, which although
played throughout the festival is not broadcasted to other
parts of the complex. While there are good reasons to play
down the religious aspect of the urs at many shrines where
the sayings and teachings of the saints are less suitable to
represent the state religion, at Data Darbar every effort is
made to promote Ali Hujwiri as a high authority on Islam
and to showcase this by making the urs a religious rather
than a cultural event.
For the visitors to the urs, the above developments have
obvious consequences. For many of those coming from
other parts of the country, putting up their tents in the
surroundings has become much more difficult. More of
the spaces are cleaned by the police. The massive police
forces present during urs also make it much more difficult
for those marginalized groups mentioned earlier. Many of
these groups activities, like the use of hashish in the form
of bhang (a common drink in Pakistan) or prostitution, are
illegal and often despised by society. Other activities such
as using traditional healing methods or participating in
ecstatic dance (especially when done by women) are viewed

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215

negatively by many middle- and upper-class members of

society and the clergy. While all these activities are common
at almost every shrine during the year but especially during
urs, they have been successfully prohibited inside the Data
Darbar complex and been ousted to the surroundings of the
Shrine, where they are now also being suppressed. In this
regard the urs of Data Ganj Bakhsh has also been rinsed
and become quite a different affair than at Pakistans other
shrines. While this may reflect that in general the Shrine
of Data Ganj Bakhsh has always been more popular with
the middle class as well as with more orthodox Muslims,
the further expulsion of the marginalized is clearly evident.
For the normal visitor to the Shrine, it is a different
development that has cast a shadow on the urs in recent
years. With a massive police force and heightened security
measures, it can take hours to even reach the Shrine. People
are body searched at road blockings kilometres away and,
given the number of visitors, long queues develop at these
points which are even longer at the entrances to the Shrine,
in recent years reduced to four entrances. Furthermore,
everyone has to walk to the Shrine and find parking far
away, all of which makes the visit less effortless than it used
to be. The fear of terrorist attacks is another major concern
for visitors although most agree that they are protected by
the Saint. What adds to the fear is another major event
which takes place on the 20th of Safar, the last day of urs.
Being forty days after ashura (the most important day of
the mourning for the death of Imam Hussain), the arbaeen
(Arabic for forty) or chehlum (the same name used by Urdu

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speakers) is celebrated on this day, with processions carried

out by Shia Muslims all over Pakistan. The processions
have been targeted by militants almost on a yearly basis,
and in 2011 a suicide attack was carried out by a teenager
near Bhati Gate in the Urdu Bazaar, just a few hundred
metres away from the Shrine, killing seven people. In
2010 when I attended the urs for the second year, one such
procession had been targeted in Karachi killing more than
thirty people. What was most horrifying about the attack
was that, after a first bomb blast at the procession, a second
one went off at the hospital, where many of the wounded
were brought. Walking around at the Shrine complex, I
witnessed how many visitors were called by their families,
worried that an attack would also occur at the Shrine or
close by. The reason why the procession passes so close
to the Shrine is that just to the south of it lies one of
Pakistans most important imambargahs (congregation hall
for Shia Muslims), called Karbala Gamay Shah, established
here because the site is the grave of an important Shia
Sufi, Baba Syed Ghulam Ali Shah. The chehlum procession
traditionally starts in the Walled City and ends here and
thus has to pass the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh.
Through all of these developments, the anarchic, liberal,
anti-structural and heterodox character associated with
South Asian urs festivals is much less applicable to the
urs of Data Darbar. Urs thus exemplifies again, what the
general development of the Shrine has already shown: a
shift away from a local, culturally-specific expression of
Islam, to an expression of a much cleaner and sober state-

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217

defined religious identity, in which diversity is downplayed

and unity is emphasized.
5.7Conclusion

The aim of this chapter was to show how the Shrine is

managed, how decisions are made, how various actors
from the state to civil society participate in the process of
decision-making, and how the Shrine is used to represent
a national religious identity. The focus so far has clearly
been on the Auqaf Department and the administration of
the Shrine, because in many cases the process of change at
the Shrine has been initiated by actors from within these
institutions (or at least closely attached to them like the
RPC). The visitors to the Shrine have little choice than to
react, only in a few cases have they had a direct influence
as was the case after the terror attacks in 2010. As many
theoretical thinkers have pointed out, space is produced
and reproduced by the practices carried out in them. This
applies to the Shrine as well. However, from a certain
perspective, the Shrine of Data Darbar is defined more by
the practices abandoned and suppressed that differentiate it
in many regards from other shrines. State control is present
not only by the guards waking up sleeping visitors telling
them to go to the mosque for prayer, but also inscribed into
the architecture in many ways, for example through the
division of functional spaces, through having the qawwali
in the basement or by strictly segregating genders with
fences and walls. An obvious reaction by visitors is to move
activities to the surroundings. In a sense this is what the

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sajjada nishin did when their access to the Shrines income

was denied and they opened shops outside the Shrine to
cater for their livelihood. After the nationalization, the
building of the complex and the larger influence both by
politicians and the economical elite, marginalized groups
have to some extent been ousted to the surroundings of the
Shrine as well. One can therefore not speak of the Shrine
without looking at the effects the Shrines development
since independence has had on its environment, the focus
of the next chapter. The chapter also looks at a development
that has run parallel to that of stronger control. From the
very beginning, the Auqaf Department has concentrated
parts of its effort on the propagation of social welfare at the
Shrine, especially through the Data Darbar Hospital. As
the hospital is situated outside of the Shrine complex and
because a number of social welfare activities take place not
within the complex but outside of it, the combination of a
large number of marginalized people and the provision of
social welfare, have turned the immediate surroundings of
the Shrine into a social centre of the city, one accompanied
by a large number of economic activities that redefine the
Shrines functions for the city.

A Shrine gone Urban

As I unlock my bicycle, I wave goodbye to my daughter leaning
out of the window of the first floor and start my daily trip to
the Shrine. I take a right, a left, right again and passing the
small neighbourhood mosque I enter into the larger road. The
houses are almost all three to four stories high, with a rooftop
to sleep on in the summer. Nobody has an AC here, neither the
additional generators to overcome the load-shedding so typical
of the residential area I lived in before moving closer to my
place of research. The road is just wide enough for two small
trucks to pass, which does not keep anybody from passing at full
speed of course. After the usual near-death experiences typical
of riding a bicycle in a South Asian megacity, I enter into a
calmer road. Passing a couple of small printers producing school
books, pamphlets, posters and the like, I ride along the fence of
the Data Darbar Hospital. A couple of drug addicts hang out
around the main gate, opposite the pharmacy shops. Some of the
old two-stroke rickshaws banned from the rich residential areas
are waiting for patients who want to go home. I take a left turn
and now all shops are selling mechanical spare parts. Anything
anybody could ever need for their vehicle is produced here in
small workshops often extended out on the road, especially for
welding or casting otherwise producing an unbearable heat
inside a two by two metre room. From long before I have been

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MANAGING PIETY

able to see the golden top of one of the minarets of Data Darbar,
but now I am just behind its large mosque. I take a right turn
into Zaildar Road, carry my bicycle over a metal barricade and
now, parallel to the mosque, the spare parts market turns into
a market for toys, CDs, DVDs, grave sheets, amulets, posters,
caps and food sold in large metal pots. Just by the smell of the
market my body calms down, because it knows I have reached
Data Darbar.
Depending on where one approaches Data Darbar from,
the first signs are quite different. Coming from the wealthy
areas, such as Gulberg, Defence or the Cantonment to the
south-east of the city, the first sign of Data Darbar is a
signpost on Mall Road, brown instead of blue in colour,
indicating that Data Darbar is in the category of a national
monument or historical site like the Badshahi mosque or
the Old Fort. From here, one reaches the Shrine just before
coming to historical Lahore and it is a bridge between the
precolonial and colonial city. Coming from the poorer areas
in the north the signs are blue, just like those pointing to
a district of the city, indicating that it is a place with an
importance far from historical. From here it is a bridge
as well, from the more self-organized part of the city to
the part where most of the government institutions are
positioned. Perhaps the Shrine symbolizes both, inside
a strictly controlled space under state control through
the Auqaf Department, outside two large markets where
various actors and individuals participate in the citys most
lively commercial and social centre. Coming from within
the Walled City, the Shrine is situated where larger Lahore

A Shrine gone Urban

221

begins, just outside Bhati Gate. Similar is the feeling when

coming from the west, the Bilal Ganj Area, or Data Ganj
Bakhsh Town, a residential area with a large market for
vehicle spare parts where I lived when I wrote the above.
This chapter68 explores the surrounding area of the Shrine
and which functions the Shrine has for the city. On the
one hand, the direct influence on the built environment is
restricted to a geographically small area around the Shrine.
On the other hand, the functions the shrine fulfils for the
city have an enormous outreach. I have divided this chapter
into three sections, looking at different dimensions of the
influence of the Shrine. I start by looking at the markets
around the Shrine and the economic dimension of the
Shrine. The markets have in recent years come under
pressure because of a changed security situation around
the Shrine and I will look at the security dimension of the
surrounding area as a second dimension. Even though the
Shrine is a potentially risky place in this regard to terrorist
attacks, for many people it is the exact opposite, a place
where many social welfare institutions are based and where
basic needs can be met by all parts of society. The third
dimension is therefore that of social welfare exemplified by
two institutions, one directly connected to the Shrine, the
Data Darbar Hospital, the other one a small NGO initiated
by a social worker, picking up runaway children. The food
distribution and other social welfare activities will also be
dealt with in this section.

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6.1Surrounding the Sacred: Three

Dimensions of the Shrines Influence

6.1.1 The Economic Dimension

In order to understand the situation around the Shrine, it

is necessary to get acquainted with this area. The Shrine
complex is situated at one of Lahores largest traffic
junctures, where the Lower Mall Road meets the Circular
Road, a road circling the Walled City. The layout of the
Shrine is a large rectangular space with its long sides to the
north and south and the main entrances to the east, where
it is facing the road junction. Behind the mosque of the
Shrine, a line of houses remains from before the extension
of the complex, with no attachment to the Shrine. Houses
face the Shrine at the northern and southern side, making
these the main areas for market activities. The area around
the Shrine is commonly known as Bilal Ganj, a market for
mechanics and vehicle spare parts and a residential area.
About 500 metres to the north of Data Darbar is another
important shrine (Pir Makki) and the road connecting these
two is a market as well, with a majority of shops selling
household products. Shops selling products related to the
Shrine are found only in the two streets next to it, with
very few exceptions on the Lower Mall Road and the road
connecting it with the other shrine.
I was interested to know the Shrines impact on prices of
property around it and heard from several people that the
prices were extremely high in this otherwise fairly poor
part of the city. At first, talking to a number of property
dealers seemed to prove this right. Interviews were decisive

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223

however, because of the way baraka, spiritual blessing, is

conceived in this context. In my experience in Lahore,
baraka is attached to objects, people or practices through
the capacity of establishing a relationship between these
and the Saint and not to be understood as a substance
radiating from a source (the grave), which gives most to
what is geographically closer and then fades out into space.
When I asked about the influence of the Shrine on the
property prices in the area, I had made the latter the basis
of my assumption, that there was a connection between
how close a property was to the Shrine, and its price. By
asking about this relationship, I established it in the first
place, thus giving the informant no choice but to answer
that prices were higher. Additionally only very few actually
had ever sold a house in the area and it was not until I had
visited a house for rent myself and later talked to another
property dealer close to it, that I got concrete numbers
showing a different picture. The house I had looked at
was situated in the second row behind the market, four
stories high and with a view of the Shrine from its roof
terrace. The price however was more or less the same for
an equivalent house in terms of size and quality inside the
walled city or the larger area around it. As one property
dealer put it, The price is only higher where better business
opportunities are expected.69 The houses gaining higher
prices are therefore only those just in front of the Shrine.
According to the same property dealer, the prices can be
five to seven times higher, with the absolute peak near
the Shrines main entrances and the golden gate (all Data
Darbar Road). A house in this area is only very rarely for

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MANAGING PIETY

sale though and in the southern market nearly all houses

belong to the biraderi (in this case, the extended family)
of the sajjada nishin. The northern market (Zaildar Road)
is different, because it became a market connected to the
Shrine only after the extensions in the 1980s. Before, there
were houses on both sides of the road selling sanitary
items. In 2009, when I mapped all the shops (see Fig. 29),
there were only three shops left of this kind. Houses here
are owned by people now living in richer areas of the city
because their houses give a high rent to live off. I was able
to find only one shopkeeper who was also the owner of the
shop in the northern market. All other shops are rented,
or in one case, run by the sajjada nishin through a number
of employees. One of the important current sajjada nishins
owns one house in each of the two markets. These are
marked by his photograph on large illuminated shop signs
and are the most popular shops for buying langar. Both
are situated at the entrances closest to the tomb and the
southern one was selling langar also before the changes to
the Shrine were made.
The distribution of the shops is a historically grown pattern
depending on three major factors:
1. The typical customers for certain products, e.g. people
coming from villages buying souvenirs.
2. The relationship between shopkeepers and owners,
including the sajjada nishin and his relatives, for
example, when a shop is rented out at a low price
because of a long-lasting relationship.

A Shrine gone Urban

225

3. The gendered entrances which divide the two markets

into areas with different proportions of male and
female customers.
Before looking at these factors I will briefly describe the
different types of shops prevailing in the markets (see
Fig.29):
Langar: About a third of the shops, taking up nearly half
of the market space, sell langar. Typically sold in large
pots, called degs, the langar, food especially cooked to
be distributed at shrines, is bought by visitors and then
distributed to people either visiting the Shrine, or staying
near the shops or the distribution lot inside the Shrine
waiting to get food. The customers either distribute the
food at the shop or in the langar khana. Although the
administration also distributes some food, it is not much
compared to the langar bought outside or brought from
home by the visitors. The food is mostly distributed after
a wish directed to the Saint has been fulfilled. Most shops
have two or three workers per shift and two shifts, normally
from 9 to 9 or 8 to 8. They use carts to transport the degs
to the distribution lot if desired. As the area to the east
of the Shrine with the Lower Mall Road and the Data
Darbar Park has no shops but is extremely crowded and
because it is the area most people arrive at, there are at
least thirty men standing offering langar by showing the
visitor a small card with the prices per kg. Most work
independently, getting a small provision from the shop
that they take the customers to. They are not employed by
the shopkeepers. Some of them also offer their service to

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MANAGING PIETY

the cars approaching the car parking basement. Four to six

men do this job and there is a strict system of three cars
per person before the next person is allowed to offer langar
to the drivers and passengers.
Religious Items: Also in large numbers, these shops sell
caps, chaddars (grave sheets), books and flowers. They
often only have a table to show their products and in many
cases share the space of the shop with other vendors, either
selling the same products, bangles or toys. Most of these
shops are between one and two metres wide and have one
person per shift. In most cases, I found that the two people
renting such a small shop are brothers or cousins, sharing
the cost and profit. The rent is paid daily.
Bangles: Bangles are the most common commodity in
Punjabi gift exchanges. The shops also sell jewellery. They
are run in the same way as those selling religious items.
Toys: Sometimes overlapping with the preceding category,
these shops sell plastic toys and souvenirs and sometimes
bangles as well.
Posters, pictures and paintings: Shops of this category sell
posters showing illustrations of the Shrine and the Saint
in different positions as well as posters depicting other
shrines and diverse arrangements of different saints and
their tombs. Pictures are typically of the Shrine at urs. They
often use more space of the shop than the bangles, toys and
religious items, indicating that they have been there longer,
and at some point started renting out part of the shop. This
is supported by the fact that the selling of these items has

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227

a much longer tradition in Pakistan, than for example, the

selling of bangles or toys near the shrines.70
CDs, DVDs and cassettes: These shops sell qawwali
recordings and cassettes with instructions about Islam.
They use their sound systems to gain attention and the
market is often filled with qawwali from these shops. The
DVDs are usually concerts with video footage of the urs cut
in. As with the poster shops, these shops occupy more space
inside the shop and often have a TV to show the DVD or
VCD before the customer buys it.
The last four categories, tea and food shops, vehicle spare
parts, sanitary items and other shops can also be found
in the adjacent area. At the eastern end of the southern
market, a mixture of these shops takes over from the other
categories attached to the Shrine. They profit from the busy
market next to them, while at the same time serving the
adjacent Bilal Ganj spare parts market. This small market
behind the Shrines mosque thus caters for two different
clienteles. As with the northern market, the houses are
owned by various people not particularly related to the
Shrine.
The distribution of the shops seems at first obscure. In
both markets a mixture of shops prevails near the main
entrances, then overtaken by mainly langar shops. In the
northern market, the spare parts then take over from near
the mosque and in the southern market the mentioned
mixture of not-shrine-related shops starts. In order to

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MANAGING PIETY

understand this pattern I will now look at the three factors

mentioned above:
1. The typical customers for certain products.
The distinction of customers, most often made by
shopkeepers, is not class, religious sect or gender, but
whether they are from Lahore or from outside the city.
When I first looked closer at the shops I wondered why so
many were selling bangles and toys or souvenirs. The reason
is that many outsiders, especially from the villages around
Lahore come to the city only because of Data Sahib, or if
not, at least this is where they arrive, the bus station being
very close to the Shrine. After visiting the Shrine they buy
these items to take home instead of going to the market
specifically known for these items as most Lahoris would
do. Back in the village, the items will be connected to the
Shrine, being bought in its market. Some of the souvenirs
are related to popular stories told about the Saint, making
the connection evident, however most of the items can be
bought anywhere else for lower prices and apparently have
no connection to the Shrine. It is thus the act of buying
them at the Shrine that gives them additional value. One
shopkeeper also openly admitted that many of the villagers
do not know the prices for certain products unfamiliar to
them, thus making it easier for them to get a higher price.
While selling, the shopkeepers establish the connection to
the Saint in their appraisal of the item. The shops selling
religious items do not need to make these connections and
their products are more related to practices at the Shrine,
like the laying of a chaddar, the wearing of a cap inside

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229

the complex or the throwing of flowers onto the tomb.

Considering the comparably low prices of these items, they
are affordable for the poor coming to the Shrine. These
shops therefore have by far the largest number of potential
customers, a factor why so many of these shops can survive
in the two markets. The opposite is the case for the langar
shops. A deg typically costs four to five hundred rupees
for the smallest size and lowest quality. Although many
consider giving langar important enough to give more than
their weekly pay for it, it is much cheaper to bring the food
from home. The langar shops thus rely to a much greater
extent on more well-off customers. However, a small shop
with only two employees can survive on two customers
per day, a reason so many langar shops can exist around
the Shrine. Today, most langar shops are situated near the
entrances closest to the tomb and closest to the langar
khana. This reflects the wish to distribute the food close to
the Saint. Since the degs are heavy and only transportable
by cart, the options are to distribute the food in the langar
khana or at the shop. Further the traditional preparers of
the food were the sajjada nishins who had their residences
close to the Shrine. Another reason for the distribution of
langar shops near the main entrances might be that many of
them have regular customers thus not making it necessary
to be positioned where the people arrive, as is the case for
the other shops.
2. The relationship between shopkeeper and owner.
I will later give a rough overview of the prices for renting
shops in the different areas of the markets. Even though

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MANAGING PIETY

there are underlying principles governing the prices, some

shops could not survive where they are now, if these
principles were applied. This is the case for those shops
in the northern market selling sanitary items for example.
The main reason sanitary items still exist here is that the
shopkeepers have long-lasting relationships to the owners
of the shop. Their customers also need to know that there
is this kind of shop here, which is only the case for those
who have known the place for a while, dating back to the
time when there was a bazar for these items. Shopkeepers
with good relations to the owners pay their rent on a
monthly basis and the payment is about half of that of
neighbouring shops of similar size. The same is the case for
some of the shops in the southern market. Here I found
one shop selling books paying four hundred rupees a day,
while the neighbour paid eight hundred rupees for the same
size of shop, selling bangles. The difference was that one
had been there many years and the other one had come
recently. Relationships often have the form of a patronclient relationship. This is also the case with the shops run
by the main sajjada nishin. In both shops, all work is done
by employees, in the northern market only a few, but in the
southern market at least thirty people. Asked what would
happen if someone got sick, all agreed that they would be
helped by their employer.
3. The gendered entrances.
This is only a minor factor compared to the other two,
but might become more important in the future due to a
different gender policy by the administration of the Shrine.

A Shrine gone Urban

231

As we have seen, it was common for women to enter both

sides of the complex, especially when accompanied by
male family members. This was changed in 2008 and now
the genders are strictly separated. As most children enter
together with women and not men it is understandable
that more shops selling toys are positioned in the northern
market. However, there are shops selling bangles (an item
mostly exchanged between women) still running in the
southern market.
Most shops are around two metres wide and seldom more
than a metre deep. The price for a shop of this size varies.
The lowest prices are paid by the shops selling sanitary
equipment and those situated in the southern market
behind the mosque, selling different items like shoes, meat
or scissors and knives, to name only a few. The rent paid
is around two hundred rupees per day, or six thousand
rupees per month. The highest prices are paid near the
golden gate entrance, near the northern womens entrance
and at the main road with the two main entrances. The
rent per day for these shops can easily be more than eight
hundred rupees, with an absolute peak, according to all
shopkeepers, near the male entrance on the southern
market. Unfortunately this was the only area where some
shopkeepers were reluctant to give me information about
their payment or the rent for the shops. According to other
shopkeepers however, most of the shops near the main road
on the southern market are owned by relatives of the sajjada
nishin and they work with employees rather than renting
the shop out. The payment for almost all workers in any

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MANAGING PIETY

of the shops is between two hundred and three hundred

rupees per day. On days when business is particularly good
workers do get a share and the total payment is around
four hundred to five hundred rupees. As one worker put it:
We rely on these days, when we earn more. For the owner,
renting out the shop will in most cases be financially more
secure but overall give a smaller revenue. It is therefore
understandable that when the markets gained financial
momentum with the extensions made to the Shrine and an
increase in visitors in the 1980s and 1990s, most owners
left the area, for more prestigious residential areas while
only those related to the sajjada nishin stayed in the area
and still run the shops themselves. In many cases however,
these owners have also moved, but still come to the Shrine
daily for a couple of hours and keep up their relationship to
the Shrine and take care of their business. It is important to
note, that none of the shops in the two markets belong to
the Shrine. At other shrines, land is often directly attached
to the shrine, but at Data Darbar, this land is agricultural
land spread out through the Punjab and an area about 100
metres to the south-west of the Shrine. Most of the latter
is used by the Data Darbar Hospital but there are also the
shops mentioned earlier which pay monthly rents to the
administration of the Shrine, all part of the Bilal Ganj
spare part market.
The underlying principle for the price of a shop in the
market is the number of potential customers, dependant
mainly upon the closeness to the four main entrances and
the main arrival point of nearly all visitors at the Data

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233

Darbar Road/Lower Mall Road. The closeness to the tomb

and langar khana is important for the langar shops, because
most people want to distribute the food near the Saint.
Assuming that the market is saturated on the basis of how
many shops can still gain a profit, it is possible to estimate
the total economic exchange around the Shrine. The actual
income of the shops cannot be estimated because none of
the shops are willing to give out exact numbers due to the
fear of having to pay high taxes. Most Lahoris who know
the markets imagine the actual income to be at least four
times the expenditure on which my calculation is based.
There are a total of one hundred and forty-four shops
selling Shrine-related items. There are approximately
another forty shops relying on the visitors of the Shrine,
selling tea or food (not for langar) and soft drinks,
cigarettes, etc. Excluded in the following calculations are
those shops who are selling products of the Bilal Ganj
market, e.g. vehicle spare parts and those selling sanitary
items, because as the shopkeepers told me, their customers
come not because of the Shrine, but because they knew
the shops from the time before the Shrine was enlarged,
when the market was not connected to it yet. Out of the
remaining one hundred and eighty-four shops, sixty-one are
langar shops. These have more workers and will be dealt
with separately. The other one hundred and twenty-three
shops have always at least two workers, mostly three and
sometimes more, so I calculate three workers on average.
This means that approximately three hundred and sixtynine workers on a payment of average 300 rupees per day

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MANAGING PIETY

earn 110,700 rupees per day. In addition they have to pay

the rent or make enough surplus to make it financially
more attractive not to rent the shop out. The minimum
I assume for the average rent is around 500 rupees per
shop making the total sum 110,700 + (132x500=66,000)
= 176,700 rupees. Adding at least 20 per cent as a surplus
necessary to justify why many shops are not rented out but
run by the owners, this equals around 200,000 rupees per
day of necessary income.
For the langar shops the calculation is much more
complicated. Most langar shops have four to five employees
but some, as mentioned above, have many more. Again,
going for the minimum, the average could be seven workers
per shop. As the shops need more space I use around 700
rupees as the average rent. The total sum thus is 7x61x300
+61x700= 170800. Also, the 30+ persons selling the langar
outside the Shrine on provision need to earn at least 200
rupees per day = 6000 rupees. Adding to this comes the
shop near the golden gate run by the sajjada nishin which
sells an average of 50 degs 400 rupees per day making it an
exceptional case not considered above (20,000 rupees extra).
The sum I assume for all langar shops is thus an additional
200,000 rupees per day.
If the total sum per day is 400,000 rupees it makes 12
million rupees per month. To calculate the annual sum we
need to add the extra amount earned during urs, according
to most shopkeepers at least the sum equal to two or three
months. I therefore assume the annual economic exchanges
around the Shrine at (12+2) x12 million = 168 million

A Shrine gone Urban

235

rupees. This number greatly relies on assumptions and

should only be seen as a very rough estimate. The sum does
not include vendors using carts that regularly walk in the
two markets, people selling birds or sweets outside the two
main entrances or the many people making a living from
begging at the Shrine.
The total economic exchange could easily be twice as
much and becomes revealing when compared to the annual
donations at the Shrine which amount to nearly 200
million rupees. The money spent by visitors outside the
Shrine and in some way connected to the visit of the Shrine
is thus in the range of what is donated inside the Shrine.
So far I have looked at the impact of the Shrine on its
surroundings in terms of formal employment in the
shops. The number of people renting a shop or working
as employees can be estimated at around 800 to 1000
persons. While this is an impressive number of people
indirectly depending on the Shrine, it is small compared to
the number of people working in the surroundings in the
informal sector or those depending on the Shrine for daily
food and shelter.
The informal employment around the Shrine consists
of people selling items on carts, from hawkers trays or
from their hands, many of whom sell sweets or plastic
bags, which are bought by people to take back food
given to them at the Shrine. Criminal activities including
prostitution, kidnappings and drug dealing also secure
livelihoods for a number of people, although as we will see

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MANAGING PIETY

shortly, these activities have declined recently. Then there

are many people who find an occupation on a daily basis,
one day begging, the next day reselling langar, and the next
helping the car drivers to cross the road after leaving the
car basement and earning a couple of rupees for it. For this
extensive group, the administration estimates that around
four thousand people permanently live on the streets around
the Shrine, the Shrine offers food, water, sanitary facilities
and shelter from rain, cold and sun. Termed as beggars and
drug addicts by the police and administration and generally
seen as a source of irritation, they have to deal with abusive
treatment. While sitting outside the main entrance talking
to the police officer in charge, I witnessed a phone call
made to him asking to remove the addicts on the other
side of the road. Usually asked to do this by rich visitors
to the Shrine, the addicts are picked up by a large bus
and brought to a rehabilitation centre outside of the city.
Even though officially this centre exists, according to staff
at the Shrine, most often the detained persons are simply
driven out of the city and dropped on the roadside, soon
making their way back to Data Darbar. In an interview
with a group of men, aged between twenty and sixty,
sitting outside one of the smaller entrances, all mentioned
that they had witnessed violence by the police and openly
spoke about it until two police officers on a motorcycle
approached. Suddenly the tone changed completely and
all the men agreed the violence never occurred. A similar
effect happened when speaking to people about the ways
in which informal labour is organized. While people
begging or selling sweets are clearly controlled in terms

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237

of where they can position themselves and how much of

their income they have to share with someone overlooking
the area, few were willing to speak about it, especially
when a certain person arrived. After a while I recognized
the persons in charge but they now knew me as well
so gathering information on this topic was never easy.
The relationship between the workers and shop owners
to the Saint varies. While many of the old shop owners
have a strong relationship to the Saint, the majority of
workers in the shops are from rural areas, often from the
northern areas or the border region to Afghanistan. They
are Pashtuns, for many of whom the veneration of saints
does not play the central role it does for most Punjabis and
most have come to Lahore only for work. The same is the
case for many of those who work in the informal sector.
Almost all of them have family they support through their
work, and most share a room with a couple of men near the
Shrine and go home once or twice a month.
The economic importance of the Shrine lies in its very
specific function for the lowest income groups. Similar
to the rural to urban labour migration, there is an intracity labour migration on a smaller scale, with comparable
pulling factors. In interviews with those working informally
near the Shrine, many pointed out that it was the only
place where various income opportunities existed not
demanding any education. Many had first sought a real job
when coming to Lahore from the rural areas, and had only
started working around the Shrine afterwards. While there
are other places, such as the railway station, that provide a

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large informal labour market, they do not offer the social

welfare system provided at Data Darbar. For those earning
only fifty to hundred rupees per day, even the cheapest meal
becomes a financial burden. The constant availability of
food around and inside the Shrine gives a person one less
thing to worry about. For those not having a place to live,
the Shrine also offers shelter and sanitation. Before looking
more closely at the social welfare actors active around the
Shrine later in this chapter, the close connection between
the markets and the Shrine will be made evident when
looking at the recent developments in which the Shrine
has become a target for terrorist attacks.
6.1.2 The Security Dimension

In all my interviews with shopkeepers and their employees,

one topic was prominent when it came to their current
financial situation: The decline in the number of customers
due to the political situation in Pakistan since 2006 and,
more recently, the twin suicide bombings of July 2010. The
terror attacks will be dealt with in detail in the next chapter.
Here I will look at the effects of the Shrines security
situation on the markets surrounding it.
When I first visited the Shrine in February 2009 the two
markets were open to traffic. Half a year later, on the 12th
of June 2009, just after the Friday prayer, a suicide attack
carried out in a madrasa and mosque in Garhi Shaho, a part
of Lahore, killed an anti-Taliban ulama, Dr Sarfraz Ahmed
Naeemi, and four other people. It was the first attack to
hit a religious building in Lahore. Subsequently, security

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239

was tightened at all mosques across the city. Only a week

later, GeoTV reported on their website that two terrorists
were aiming at hitting an academy and a college, and Data
Darbar (Geo Pakistan 2009).
Since mid-2009, the administration has regularly received
warnings by the intelligence agencies. When I returned to
Lahore in September 2009, the Shrine was considered the
third most threatened place in Lahore, after the Governors
House and the Punjab Assembly.
In order to minimize the threat of a large bomb blast, the
two markets were blocked at that time and have not been
reopened for traffic since, changing the markets drastically.
Not all shopkeepers are complaining though, as especially
in front of the golden gate entrance, where the road is only
a few metres wide, the traffic used to make the distribution
of food outside the shop difficult. But for the most part
and especially for those having their shops near the western
end of the markets, the stop in traffic is a real threat to
their business and some shops have since closed. Although
complaints were made by some shopkeepers to the police,
the fact that markets in Lahore were targets of suicide
attacks at the time, made a reopening extremely unlikely.
The two scenarios most anticipated by the police were
a very large bomb transported in a vehicle positioned as
close as possible to the market or Shrine, or a suicide
bomber entering the Shrine. Therefore, in addition to the
barricades blocking the two markets, a long barricade was
put up along the Lower Mall Road, adding at least four

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MANAGING PIETY

metres to the distance between Shrine and the vehicles on

the road (Fig. 29). The road thus narrows in front of the
Shrine because of these security measures, and traffic has
consequently been packed outside the Shrine.
In preparation for the 2010 urs celebrations, the video
surveillance of the complex was upgraded to almost one
hundred cameras and metal detectors where installed at all
entrances where, from now on, all persons entering were
body checked and bags were searched. On the four main
entrances policemen were positioned behind sandbags on
the roof. After the attacks they have been repositioned
in newly-built towers overlooking the area. Security
checkpoints have been put up at the major roads leading
to the Shrine. Despite all of these efforts, one of the higher
ranked police officers at the police station in charge of the
area was rather tentative about the situation at the Shrine
when I interviewed him in October 2009, long before the
attacks: It is a critical point because its an easy target for
terrorists. People are coming and going, although we do
the personal checking, body checking, nobody knows who
is a potential attacker, and because the people are very
devoted, because it is a holy shrine, it is very difficult to
check everyone. [] It could be an easy target; it is situated
on the brink of a road.71 The officer was pointing out the
difficulties in handling the many visitors and the problem
that the main road cannot easily be blocked since there is no
alternative route for the traffic. According to his estimates,
there were more than two hundred policemen on duty at
the Shrine in order to meet the security demands, of which

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241

only about half are in uniform. On Fridays or days around

important religious dates like Eid, where more visitors
were expected, the number was twice and sometimes three
times as high. Even before the suicide attacks, the situation
around the Shrine was heavily affected by the threat of such
an event. The consequence was not only that the markets
suffered and traffic became more congested, but also that
crimes declined due to the amount of officers on duty near
the Shrine. As mentioned before, shrines are perceived to
attract criminals of various kinds, and especially among the
more educated Lahoris it was a very common perception
that the Shrine is a rather dangerous place in this regard.
This view is shared only to some extent by the people living
in the area around it, who generally focus on the Shrines
positive social welfare effects. From the point of view of
an interview partner living near the Shrine the police
enforcement had a positive effect:
So what are the crimes committed over there (at the
shrine)? Before this type of threatenings (bomb blasts)
and this police enforcement, there were more crimes,
like pickpocketing, sometimes prostitution, sometimes
children were kidnapped and some children, girls
who have run away from home, they find a nice place
here for themselves, because they are given food three
times a day, and a place to sleep. Whenever any girl
is running away from her house, even if she was a
nice girl, a gentle girl, whenever she comes here,
some bad women are around and whenever they see
these innocent girls who have run away from their

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MANAGING PIETY

homes, maybe her husband was beating her or she

was worried because her father was going to marry
her with some older man, but once she is around
and there is any woman from the prostitution area,
she will take her (the girl) to her (the prostitute)
place, and tell her: ok you are like my daughter, I will
give you shelter, I will give you food, and once this
innocent girl has been taken to that womans family
she will gradually become a prostitute. And some of
the very low standard prostitutes are standing around
the shrine []. So when the villagers are around and
some prostitutes are around, they just look at them and
when they have established eye contact after a couple
of minutes they will leave together in a rickshaw and
sometimes they will go to her house and do some bad
things and sometimes they dont do anything with
them, but the rickshaw driver will be a friend of the
prostitute and then she will say to the villager: Give
me money!, and after a while the rickshaw driver will
tell the villager that if he doesnt pay, they will take
him to a police station. So the villager is afraid of the
police and will give them some money, without having
had sex.
So how do you know all this? I have lived here all my life
and come here (to the shrine) every now and then and
sometimes I see some women again and again.[]
Have you ever read anything about this in any newspaper?

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243

Yes regarding pickpocketing and some drugs: Some people

give some intoxicated food to the people and after they are
intoxicated they fall unconscious and their money is stolen.
These types of things I have read in the newspaper, but
regarding prostitution, I dont know why, I havent read about
it in any newspaper.72

To the north of the Shrine, a pedestrian bridge crosses the

road and gives a good view of the Shrine and the space
in front of it. A perfect viewpoint for the researcher, it is
also a place where prostitutes meet their customers or find
them in the first place. Typically, the women will stand on
the bridge until a potential costumer establishes eye contact
and they will then leave the bridge, one after the other, and
take a rickshaw from the rickshaw stand just next to the
bridge. Similarly the bridge is also considered a meeting
point for homosexuals. While these activities are an open
secret, other crimes as mentioned in the interview are less
observable. Very common are tricks played on villagers,
often based on their mistrust of the police. One day
while visiting a friend, the kids pointed to the TV saying
someone was talking about Data Darbar. In the TV show,
a police officer was interviewed about the situation around
the Shrine. In an effort to enlighten and possibly to warn
people about criminals, he told how villagers are offered
food and drinks and afterwards asked a very high price for
it. After villagers are threatened to be taken to the police,
they pay the amount in order to be free of any lengthy and
possibly even more costly encounter with the police (the
amount of self-reflection on the side of this officer was
anything but typical).

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On one of my visits to the Shrine, I found most of the

administration in a very worried state and a meeting had
just been held at the Shrine with the highest officials from
the Shrine and the Auqaf Department. A woman from
a rich family had been poisoned inside the Shrine and
then been kidnapped. Although the kidnappers had later
let her go and the incident was recorded by a camera, the
kidnappers were not identified. Questioning one employee,
who had been working for the administration for several
years, about the incident, he told me: We tried to do
something about this a couple of years ago, when this
happened very often. We caught the criminals but then
we received phone calls from Islamabad, from very high
up, ordering to release them again. They kidnapped young
women for prostitution in the highest political circles. The
only thing we can do is protect the women through the
separation of the genders and to keep telling the people
not to take food from strangers.73
The separation of the genders might have bettered the
situation, but as can be seen in the case mentioned above,
it has not eliminated it. The warning not to take food from
strangers is very difficult since the food that is distributed
is considered to contain baraka, blessings of the Saint.
But the situation has improved. Crimes have decreased
considerably also according to police officers working at
the Shrine and while some years ago dead bodies of drug
addicts were found nearly daily and the numbers were
increasing yearly, this problem has come under control. The
police officer in charge of the small police station inside the

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245

Shrine has recently been changed every three months to

prevent corruption. However, Data Darbar remains a place
associated with various forms of crimes. To get a better
understanding of how this aspect is related to the Shrine
on a daily basis, it helps to look at a local NGO which aims
at saving children at the Shrine from abuse, kidnapping
or a career as criminals themselves. The NGO is one of
several social welfare institutions at the Shrine that further
broadens the functions the Shrine has for the city, and
which with the economic dimension of the markets and
the informal labour, add to the social importance of the
area around the Shrine.
6.1.3 The Social Welfare Dimension

The narrative presented earlier, of young girls or women

leaving their village because of problems with their fathers,
brothers or husbands and then being picked up by pimps
or prostitutes and forced into prostitution is repeated
manifold when talking to Lahoris about the negative
aspects of the Shrine. What is certain is that many children
and young adults come to the Shrine for food and shelter.
As a reaction to the growing number of cases reported
in newspapers about the abuse and kidnapping of these
children and young adults, an NGO named Idara Khidmate-Insaniyat (Organization for the Service of Humanity) was
established in 2001 by a social worker. Although established
because of the general situation in Lahore, Data Darbar was
seen as central in the aim of taking these children back to
their families. The NGO has a main office in Iqbal Town,

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a part of Lahore, and additional small counters near the

railway station and at Data Darbar. The counter at the
Shrine is a three by three metre metal lodge, placed on the
Circular Road across the Shrine, where two social workers
sit from around 5 a.m. to 10.30 p.m., sometimes also until
late hours at night.
According to both these workers and the director and
initiator of the NGO, an average of five children are
brought to them every day. This is around half of all the
children the NGO picks up in Lahore. In more than 90 per
cent of the cases, these are boys between ten to seventeen
years of age. They are either brought by visitors of the
Shrine or picked up during the night by the NGO workers,
in very rare cases a police officer brings them in. They
are then reported to the police and after this taken to the
NGOs main office from where their parents are contacted
and in most cases come to pick them up within twentyfour hours. Those children who are homeless are brought
to a Nigheban Centre (government-funded home for lost
or runaway children). The children sometimes come to the
Shrine as a group of friends, but mostly alone. That parents
lose their children while visiting the Shrine basically never
happens, said the director of the NGO in an interview. The
boys run away from home mostly because they were beaten
by someone. When I asked some of the boys present at the
NGOs main office why they had come to this particular
shrine, they said they came to Data Darbar to pay homage,
but when I asked the director he presented a different view
on this:

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247

Because of the cable-TV it [more children coming to Lahore]

is growing. The children from the small towns and villages,
when they see these movies, and the lifestyle presented in
the shows, they think if they go to Lahore they can become
famous actors.
L: So, do you think the children go to Data Darbar to pay tribute
or because there is food there?
The truth is far from this story (a boy had told us that he
only came to pay tribute, all the way from Multan, about
four hours drive from Lahore). They go there because of the
food, not to pay homage. Even in their school they get this
information, the boys talk about it, that there is this place,
the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh where there is food all the
time, and all this.74

It is not possible to evaluate what the reason behind more

children being picked up is, but all children I interviewed
did eat at the Shrine and it seemed a major reason for
them to go there, besides being one of the only places they
knew in the city. None of them said that they went to the
Shrine in order to ask the Saint for help with a problem
they were facing, which is a typical answer from young
adults interviewed at the Shrine who are from Lahore. I
asked one of the youngest boys, maybe ten years old, how
he knew where the Shrine was, if he had been there before,
and what was the main reason for him to come there:
Once I had been there with my parents. I was sick and they
took me to Data Sahib.
L: So, did you know there would be food and shelter?

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I knew that once I would reach Data Sahib there would be

plenty of food. But I also knew that they wont let me sleep
there.
L: So, where did you get the food, inside the langar khana or
outside in front of the shops?
In the langar khana, there was often no food, so mostly I got
it outside.75

His last remark shows that for the boys, the space around
the Shrine is of equal importance as the Shrine itself.
For the NGO workers, the biggest challenge is to pick
up the children before they make contact with persons
who initially will take care of them but eventually will
force them into informal labour, or even prostitution. The
children knew little about the threats they could face, but
the social workers do give them lessons on this while they
are waiting to be picked up. While for the boys this can
take a day or two, the few girls who are picked up, are
always brought back to their families on the same day.
Very few children are picked up repeatedly, according to
the workers only around 5 per cent. The children come
from all over Pakistan, including Gilgit-Baltistan or places
as faraway as Karachi (a twenty-four to thirty hour train
distance), but most of those I met were from Punjab. The
NGO is financed through donations, some of which are
given by the parents when they pick their children up.
Around twenty workers are employed by the NGO on a
payment of two thousand rupees per month but they also
sometimes do get gifts from the parents directly, making
it possible to live from the job. The NGO is not related

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249

to the Auqaf Department or connected to the Shrines

administration. Starting up the NGO had nothing to do
with the Shrine in particular. According to the initiator: It
was just the place where most children go.
In contrast, another social welfare institution, the Data
Darbar Hospital is run by the Auqaf Department and
historically closely connected to the Shrine. Located
approximately a 100 metres west of the Shrine, the hospital
offers treatment free of charge for more than 180,000
patients annually, with almost half of them coming for
eye treatment. The hospital has a growing annual budget
of around 75 million rupees and among the fourteen
medical dispensaries at various shrines also financed by the
Auqaf Department, it is the only hospital comparable to
government hospitals run under the Department of Health.
As has been mentioned the hospital dates back to the time
when the Auqaf Department took over the Shrine and used
one room of the Shrine as a dispensary. As the piece of
land belonged to the Shrine but was not directly attached
to it geographically, it was decided to be used for a hospital
in 1962, only two years after the Shrine came under
government control. The first department established was
for eye surgery. According to the Medical Superintendent,
this was because it did not require an emergency service or
accommodation for the patients and also because an eye
surgeon with a good reputation was willing to work for the
department. Over the next fifty years, different departments
were added, making it a fully fledged hospital, with almost

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a hundred beds and an average of forty operations per day

in the eye department alone.
The reasons for attaching a dispensary and later a hospital
to the Shrine have to be seen in the context of the
nationalization of the shrines as a policy by the newlyestablished state. Malik (1996, 61) has argued that the
establishment of medical institutions had the aim of
replacing the healing power of the Saint. In my experience
and interviews however, most families still go to the shrines
when someone is sick and no one sees this as a competing
healing method to the treatment in a hospital. The
treatment in hospitals and the visiting of the shrines for
spiritual blessings are simply two possibilities considered
not contradicting, but rather complementing each other.
It is therefore hardly surprising that most patients in the
Data Darbar Hospital do not make a specific connection
between the hospital and the Shrine or even see the
hospital as being a part of the Shrine. After all, there are
many institutions, shops, streets, etc. in Lahore carrying the
Saints name and the name could simply be given to the
hospital because it is close to the Shrine. Similarly, while
many in the administration of the Shrine have a close
relation to the Saint and accepted a job at the Shrine at
a lower pay scale than would have been possible for them
elsewhere, the hospital staff seem to have less attachment
to the Saint. The connection made between the Shrine and
the hospital is largely one made by the Auqaf Department
itself. As stated on its official website, among others, the
aim of the department is: To make the holy places centers

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251

of social, cultural and spiritual regeneration of Muslims in

accordance with the dictates of Islam (GOP 2012c). And
the medical superintendant puts it like this: This hospital
started in a single room in 1960 in the vicinity of the
shrine. Because they thought that when there is a surplus
of money and the teaching of the saint is to look after the
community, so how can you look after the community? By
giving them health, medical facility, by giving them the
teaching of Islam and by looking after their daily needs.76
The hospital is therefore an important institution displaying
the Auqaf Departments will of transforming the shrines
into social centres and legitimizing government control
of the Shrine with an Islamic ideology. While a discourse
about government control is taking place in Pakistan, for
most people living in the area around the Shrine, this aspect
of the hospital is negligible: it is simply a hospital offering
free treatment.
Besides the hospital and the NGO working with the
runaway children the most important social welfare activity
is the provision and distribution of langar. Langar is
distributed in most cases after a wish made at the Shrine
has been granted. A typical story why someone distributes
langar is that of a young man I met in the distribution
lot while eating langar. He had been sick for a long time
and had been in hospital in Lahore. His family, from the
countryside, often came to visit and his mother spent
almost all her free time with him. Every day she went to
Data Darbar to pray for her sons recovery, and now that
he was better and out of hospital, the whole family came

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to the Shrine to distribute the langar in the name of the

Saint. Distributing langar is not simply an act of welfare,
but rather a celebration of the Saint and the positive effect
he has had on the lives of those distributing the food. The
langar is at the same time a tribute to the Saint when it is
given, as well as perceived as coming from the Saint when
it is received. When asking about the social welfare at the
Shrine, interview partners often pointed out that it was
the Saint who took care of the poor through the Shrine.
Besides the irregular distribution of langar, there are a
number of people and groups organizing langar on a weekly
basis, distributed every Thursday night. Those that come in
a group have over the years established fixed locations in
the langar hall underneath the mosque courtyard. Normally
a group consists of ten to twenty members who are friends
or work colleagues and who divide the workload between
them. One person will for example be responsible for
collecting the money for the langar on Wednesday, another
one will buy the food on Thursday morning and drop it
at a professional cook, and other members will pick up
the cooked langar in the evening. The distribution takes
place by all members and they usually spend the rest of the
evening at the Shrine. For these groups, distributing langar
is a highly social activity. As has been pointed out earlier,
these groups, that neither have a name or a political aim
are an important part of the civil society at the Shrine that
is easily overlooked.
The provision of langar is an aspect of the Shrine which
is highlighted often by visitors to the Shrine, as well as by

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253

the staff, because it symbolizes the generosity of the Saint.

On the basis of the number of shops, their average number
of degs sold per day and the estimation that around thirty
servings come out of one deg, a very rough estimation is
that on a normal day between ten to twenty thousand meals
are provided. On Thursdays and Fridays, the numbers are
considerably higher, with a minimum of forty thousand
meals distributed. This does not include the langar
distributed at the Shrine brought from home, as most
Lahoris do, nor the langar provided three times a day by
the administration. Also, the regular distribution by private
persons and groups on Thursday nights is excluded. Thus
the most careful estimation is that at least ten to fifteen
thousand people can rely on the langar on a daily basis.
Not everyone eating langar does so because they need the
nutrition. As langar is perceived as carrying baraka, it is
often consumed by all those present in a given situation of
distribution. A side effect of this is that accepting langar is
in no way considered shameful. Instead, it is considered a
source of pride and spiritual well-being and who eats it will
not be stigmatized as a beggar for accepting langar. This is a
major difference to other food distributions, e.g. by foreign
NGOs, and shows an important potential shrines have for
the provision also of services and goods not traditionally
associated with them. While Western donor agencies
and NGOs show a reluctancy to work with so-called
Faith-Based Organizations in Pakistan, and therefore
have no history of making use either of the civil society
groups active at the shrines nor the places themselves, the

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situation is different when it comes to local NGOs and

state agencies like the government departments mentioned
earlier having their offices inside the complex.77 The Idara
Khidmat-e-Insaniyat taking care of the runaway children
decided to open their counter at Data Darbar for the
simple reason that it was here most children went, looking
for food and shelter. Thus one welfare institution followed
another. An even better example is the Akhuwat NGO
with their microfinance program. As they state on their
official website under the heading Guiding Principles,
An important and novel idea associated with individual
loans is the use of the local mosque/church infrastructure
as the center for loan disbursement and as an avenue for
community participation (Akhuwat 2012). Despite not
naming the shrines in particular, clearly a consciousness
exists that the use of already established structures is a
major advantage in reaching those in need. Besides the
rather trivial insight that it is best to establish social welfare
institutions where those in need are present and a structure
already exists, i.e. in the form of buildings to actually
distribute medicine, food, or knowledge, there is one factor
largely underestimated. An important part of the prosperity
and acceptance of development and social welfare programs
lies in the trust by those targeted that these programs will
bring about positive change. The efficacy of the Shrine, the
strong belief that anything connected in some way to the
Saint is essentially him (or God) helping, therefore makes
a difference and shows the potential shrines like Data
Darbar have as a platform for various actors to engage in
social welfare activities. It is therefore little surprising that

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255

the Shrine in recent years has not only become a centre

of gravity in regard to the discourse on Islam and Sufism
in the country, but also has emerged as one of the most
important social welfare centres in Lahore.
6.2Conclusion

Shrines are normally buildings with distinct walls and thus

visible boundaries around them. These boundaries mark an
important difference, the pure religious site from its impure
outside for example, manifested in the leaving of shoes at
the entrances and in the washing of hands, face and feet.
They also mark the boundaries of administrative control,
as we have seen in the previous chapter. The aim of this
chapter was to show that in many other regards, however,
a shrine does not stop at these boundaries. When looking
at the Shrine as a social space one needs to include those
activities that, although not happening inside the complex,
are so closely connected with it, that they would not be
there if the Shrine did not exist. Further, sacred spaces
often have long-lasting effects on their surroundings. In
the case of Data Darbar this happened when, only a few
decades after the Shrine became enclosed by the city,
its surroundings were radically changed when space was
needed for its expansion. After the architectural expansion,
the influence of the Shrine on the streets around it became
more important, especially in economic terms, with the
establishment of markets which are unique for the city,
being open twenty-four hours a day, all year long. The
economic development of the surroundings went hand

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in hand with new labour opportunities for the lowest

income groups. An advantage of working here, rather than
anywhere else, is that one can rely on a number of social
welfare services and basic needs are met. The attractiveness
of the Shrine for the poor and needy has further led a
number of civil society actors to establish their own forms
of social welfare at the Shrine. The Shrine as an institution
of social welfare has thus broadened its range of services
considerably. The concentration of services for the poor
are unmatched in Lahore, and possibly in Pakistan and are
an important part of the perception of the Shrine among
the lowest classes. At the same time, the Shrine has also
become a place of risk. The fear of an attack on the Shrine
has had negative impacts on the surrounding markets
because the streets have been blocked for traffic. It has led
to a stronger control of the area by the police which has
had the positive effect of decreased criminal activities. After
the Shrine was attacked by suicide bombers in July 2010
these effects have been intensified with even more control
and worsened economic opportunities for those working
in the markets.
The attacks also had an effect on the social welfare
institutions at the Shrine. In the next chapter we will
look at the attacks in more detail because they reveal an
important characteristic of these institutions, which are
otherwise hidden, namely their resilience towards such
violent and potentially traumatic events.

Contesting Unity: Suicide Attacks

on Data Darbar
When, on the Thursday night of the 1st to 2nd of July
2010, two suicide bombers detonated explosives and killed
themselves and more than fifty people at the Shrine of Data
Ganj Bakhsh, a fear became reality that had constantly been
on my mind for the last year. At the time of the blast, I had
just returned home from fieldwork and my initial concerns
were with the many people I knew, either working at the
Shrine or visiting it regularly. It took a number of days for
me to find out if everyone was alright; fortunately, they
were. The father of a close friend of mine had been only
metres away from the first blast that occurred, but wasnt
hurt. Otherwise most of my friends had not been at the
Shrine at the time. After the initial shock, a few long days
of making phone calls and being highly worried and then
the relief, I had to ask myself how to deal with this major
event. My initial response was to leave the attacks out of
my study. I had deliberately chosen a topic in Pakistan in
which I would not have to participate in the reproduction
of images of violence and terror, so strongly associated with
the country. Soon, of course, I had to realize that some of
the major concerns of my work, the political representation

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of religious ideology and the social dimension of the Shrine,

were not only affected by the attacks, but to some extent
were also closely connected to the question of why the
Shrine had become a target. When I came back to Lahore
a few months later to attend a conference, I extended my
stay in order to see how the Shrine had changed and to
interview those who had witnessed the attacks and others
affected. The interviews and conversations fundamentally
changed the way I viewed the civil society groups present
at the Shrine. Because the faith based part of Pakistans
civil society is almost entirely associated with uncivil
society and fundamentalist groups, I decided to give these
groups more attention. In addition the attacks also further
exemplify how much the Shrine is viewed as a symbol not
only of a particular part of Islam but also as a symbol of
the state. In a certain sense the Shrine was thus torn open
by the attacks.
The effect, that disasters often reveal structures of society
otherwise hidden, is described by Susanne Hoffman
and Anthony Oliver-Smith in their introduction to the
volume Catastrophe & Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster:
Disaster exposes the way in which people construct or
frame their peril (including the denial of it), the way they
perceive their environment and their subsistence, and the
ways they invent explanation, constitute their morality, and
project their continuity and promise into the future. Few
contexts provide a social science with more opportunity
for theoretical synthesis of its various concerns than does

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259

the study of disaster provide anthropology (Hoffman &

Oliver-Smith 2002, 5; cf. Oliver-Smith 1996, 304).
In our case the conclusions one can draw from the
disaster firstly challenge some of the common perceptions
on Faith-Based Organizations as part of Pakistans civil
society. Secondly, they exemplify recent developments in
the interior battle for the representation of Islam in public
spaces in Pakistan. In order to draw these conclusions,
which will be presented in the final chapter, the coming
sections will present, first, the chronology of the attacks
and then look at the reactions both by state actors as well
as by civil society. Finally, some of the consequences the
attacks had for the Shrine, its surroundings and the Auqaf
Department, will be dealt with.
7.1 Suicide Bombings, 1st July 2010

As we have seen in the previous chapter the police and

intelligence agencies like the ISI had regularly given
warnings about a possible attack on the Shrine of Data
Ganj Bakhsh. After a warning was issued in late June 2010,
the police and the administration of the Shrine decided to
close one of the most important entrances to the Shrine,
the golden gate entrance, from the 29th of June because of
its closeness to the tomb. Before this, it had already been
the only entry point to the Shrine for male visitors apart
from the main entrance at the Lower Mall Road and the
VIP entrance from the Zaildar Road. As a concession to
those owning shops in the southern market, especially the
sajjada nishin, it was therefore decided to open another

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entrance on the southern side. Entrance number five was

chosen because it is relatively far from the tomb and has
a large courtyard immediately behind it, so that there is
enough space for body checking by police and volunteers.
An additional advantage was that here two gates could be
opened into the courtyard, thus having a separate entry and
departure point.
The following chain of events can be reconstructed from
video footage recorded from the surveillance cameras at
the shrine.
At around 10 p.m. a man entered through the mentioned
entrance carrying a bag with him. When he passed
through the metal detector, a red light began blinking
and a volunteer named Salim Akhtar went to check him,
whereupon the man started running into the complex. The
volunteer first turned to a police officer positioned at the
entrance, but when he refused to pursue the man, he went
after him himself. He reached the attacker near the khadims
storeroom for chaddars, at the entrance to the ablution area,
from where he tried to enter the mosque courtyard. When
the volunteer grabbed the man from behind, the suicide
bomber detonated the explosives. Both the suicide bomber
and the volunteer died, as well as two visitors to the Shrine.
According to volunteers and visitors present, the detonation
was heard and felt in the whole of the complex, and
immediately people started to run to the exit points. The
volunteer organization that helps the police with the body
checking and whose members also organize the visitors to
line-up when approaching the tomb windows, also runs a

Contesting Unity: Suicide Attacks on Data Darbar

261

small counter in the womens side from where lost persons

can be called via loudspeakers. One volunteer attempted to
calm the situation by announcing through this system that
the blast had come from a generator. Despite this effort
people started to rush out of the Shrine. At the entrance
number five, closest to the blast, all police officers had run
away leaving both the entrance as well as the exit point
open. People near the ghulam gardish tried to enter the
courtyard and exit through gate five by pressing a wooden
door open, and thus giving way to a much shorter passage
out of the Shrine (see Fig. 32). This meant that when the
second suicide bomber entered the Shrine he could simply
walk through the exit point of gate five and further up to
the ghulam gardish area through the opened door. According
to some witnesses, he was stopped by several volunteers
who told him to line-up like the many visitors that still
stood in line to approach the tomb windows in front of
the ghulam gardish. Instead he triggered his explosives.
Other witnesses have stated that because he was still
wearing shoes he was approached by volunteers and visitors
and then detonated the explosives. The second bomb
detonated at a spot where several thousand people were in
the immediate surroundings and here at least forty-seven
people died and one hundred and seventy were injured. The
volunteers who later helped to clear the site, claim however,
that the death toll was much higher, some estimating at
least a hundred dead, and blaming the government for
downscaling the impact of the blasts in order to prevent
stronger demonstrations against the government.78

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7.2 Reactions and Consequences

After the two attacks most people left the Shrine, many
searching outside for their friends or family members who
had accompanied them. After police, paramedics and a
number of media personnel arrived, the site was cleared by
paramedics and the volunteers, many of whom were still at
the Shrine. The Shrine was then closed. Outside the Shrine
people started spontaneous demonstrations against the
government of Punjab. All news agencies and TV stations
reported live from the scene and quickly the video footage
from the surveillance cameras was released to the press.
Major politicians like Chief Minister of Punjab, Shahbaz
Sharif, immediately condemned the attacks. The Shrine
was reopened partly for the juma prayer, which according
to those present was attended by thousands of people both
inside the Shrine as well as outside it.
In the coming days, the attack was strongly condemned both
nationally by Pakistani politicians as well as internationally
by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton and the Indian Governments Foreign
Affairs Spokesman Vishnu Prakash. The cry for action by
leading ulama as well as the opposition led Prime Minister
Gilani to call for a national conference on the combat
of terrorism (Perlez 2010). The Sunni Ittihad Council
mentioned in chapter five also reacted and organized a
long march from Islamabad to Lahore to protest against
the attacks, which would end at Data Darbar in the end of
November and was attended by several thousand people.

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263

The Taliban were immediately blamed for the incident.

However, a spokesperson of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan
(TTP), Azam Tariq, denied responsibility two days after
the attack (Daily News 2010). Despite their denial it
was announced on the second anniversary of the attack
that three alleged members of a local group of the TTP
had been arrested for providing assistance to the suicide
attackers (ZeeNews 2012).
After the initial closure, there were only two gates open
for entry in the months to follow. This meant that visitors
had to wait in long lines for entering. It was prohibited to
take anything inside the complex including bags, cameras
and even langar. This posed a huge problem for the many
groups distributing langar inside the Shrine and they
temporarily shifted the distribution to a street behind
the complex. After a few weeks the groups distributing
langar protested and successfully regained their space for
distribution under the mosque courtyard. The langar was
now brought in plastic containers which could be checked
by the metal detectors. The confrontation between the
langar distributing groups and the administration was
followed by the replacement of the Zone Administrator,
which according to some of the employees was also a result
of the discredit given to him by these groups. However,
other employees of the administration said in interviews
that it was the pressure by the police that eventually led
to the replacement. As a reaction to the attacks several
high ranked police officers had to leave their posts and
apparently there was a strong feeling by the police that

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if only police personnel was changed this would equal a

verdict that it was only the police that was responsible for
not being able to protect the Shrine properly. From the
administrations point of view the police did clearly fail to
provide the security asked for. The conflict between the
administration and the police was further fortified when a
new DSP (Deputy Superintendent Police) was appointed
at the Shrine, who requested the managers office for
himself and also intermingled in the daily affairs of the
management.79
Security at the Shrine was increased further by building
several towers to overview the entrances and by permanently
closing all entrances except for the Lower Mall Road
entrances and the VIP entrance. More than three hundred
police officers where now on duty at the Shrine, as well as
over seventy security guards paid through a private security
company, added to the administrations own security guards.
From the perspective of the administration however, none
of these measures will make the Shrine more secure, as
anybody analysing the video footage would agree. When
I asked one of my informants in the administration what
could be done to prevent such an incident in the future
his response was more than clear. In a very emotional tone
he said:
Take the example of Salim Akhtar. I have seen the footage, and
I find that once he stopped the suicide bomber, first stopped
the suicide bomber, the suicide bomber started running away.
He asked the policemen to stop him. The police person was
sitting on the chair, although he was on duty and supposed to

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265

not be sitting. He ran away. Then Salim Akhtar, he hesitated

there, maybe for one or two seconds. I think that in that very
period, he was actually thinking whether to go after him or
not, since it was clear that the man who had run away was
holding something illegal. But at that very moment he decided
to get him, not to let him go. That was actually his faith. He
had four children, he had his mother and father depending
(on him). He had his family. But he considered that, if I will
not be alive, then at least many people may live by myby
this sacrifice. So he stopped for a moment, considered, is he
going to do it, and than he decided, with a determination, to
go after the suicide bomber and get him. This is not actually
the emotion of a police person, or anybody who is being paid.
That is why we consider that for the security situation of Data
Darbar, it is necessary that there must be somebody, who has
a spiritual relationship with the saint, the aqeedat (faith). A
true pilgrim.80

Despite clearly having the better arguments, the reaction

by the government of Punjab was not to give more
responsibility to the administration and the volunteers but
instead it followed the obvious path of simply employing
more police at the Shrine. In addition, further changes
were made to the security infrastructure, providing further
technical equipment to the guards and police and narrowing
the entry points as well as positioning the metal detectors
outside instead of inside the boundary walls. All of these
measures were paid by the Auqaf Department who in the
aftermath of the attack faced serious financial problems,
because on top of a growing expenditure the income of its
most important shrine collapsed to a third of what it was

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prior to the attacks.81 The attack also changed the situation

at other shrines, where more security personnel needed
to be employed. This was further strengthened when a
bomb exploded at the Shrine of Baba Farid Ganjshakar in
Pakpattan, another one of Pakistans most important Sufi
shrines also managed by the Punjab Auqaf Department on
the 25th of October, barely three months after the Data
Darbar attack (Reuters 2010). Although the number of
casualties was much lower (six reported deaths), it showed
that attacks were to be expected also in the future.
Apart from the Auqaf Department a number of other
groups faced major financial problems. Immediately after
the attacks the car parking basement was closed. A new
space for motorbikes and bicycles was established adjacent
to the Data Darbar Park, but this could not compensate
for the basement and the contractor paying monthly
instalments to the department complained to the Zone
Administrator. Also the income of the shoe-keeping
contractor as well as a contractor running a small sanitation
block adjacent to the Shrine in the northern market gave
their complaints and asked for a 30 per cent rebate for the
monthly instalments. Although according to employees
both the Zone Administrator and the Chief Administrator
Auqaf initially were willing to compensate the contractors,
it was decided that this could lead to future problems with
contractors and the remission was denied. The contractors
have as a result appealed to the High Court.
Overall, the attacks have had a strong impact, both on the
Shrine itself and its surroundings, but also on the Auqaf

Contesting Unity: Suicide Attacks on Data Darbar

267

Department and even relations with other agencies of

the government like that between administration and the
police. But how have those reacted for whom the Shrine
hitherto was a place of hope, peace, recollection, meditation
and relief? The interviews and conversation I could make
with visitors on this topic were unrepresentative but showed
a relatively homogeneous picture. What most people put
in focus when talking about the attacks was the figure of
Salim Akhtar, the volunteer who knowingly gave his life to
save others. Especially other volunteers pointed out, that
what he did was what anybody with a strong faith would
have done.
Another point made about the attacks was that the suicide
attackers did not succeed in reaching the tomb, or the
ghulam gardish. One interview partner further strengthened
this point by drawing a virtual circle around the second
blasts location, saying that if one looked at the damage
it would not reflect the circle, because most of the ghulam
gardish had stayed completely intact. Thus from the view
of the visitors to the Shrine, the sacrality of the space was
unbroken.
The Saint is in fact seen to have kept worse things
from happening and his position as the patron saint of
Lahore was upheld. It is closely associated with a sense of
protection as is evident from the following passage out of
Bapsi Sidhwas introduction to a collection of writings on
Lahore: [] the saint saved Lahore during the 1965 and
1971 wars with India. Sikh pilots are believed to have seen
hands materialize out of the ether to catch the bombs and

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gently lay them to the ground. How else can one explain
the quantity of unexploded bombs found in the area? They
cant all be blamed on poor manufacture, surely. (Sidhwa
2005, XIII).
The spiritual resilience towards disaster evident in the
reaction and interpretation of the attacks by those with a
strong faith in the Saint deserves more discussion. In the
next and final chapter I will deal with the implications that
the case study of Data Darbar has for various debates. It
will serve as a conclusion, at the same time it is also meant
to lift the findings of this study, that so far have been
presented largely without referring to theoretical discourses
they relate to, on to a more theoretical level, that go beyond
the case of the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh.

Data Darbar and Beyond:

Conclusions and Final Remarks
The aim of this work was to give an account of various
developments associated with one of South Asias most
important sacred sites and to point out a number of
characteristics which in this way have not been given the
attention they deserve. They deserve it because they have
consequences for a large number of people and because they
reflect to some extent the society they are a part of. Still,
essentially, this work is about one particular, concrete place,
and neither tries to prove nor disprove any theory, and is far
from developing one on the basis of one case study.
This being said, there are a number of conclusions I want
to draw from the material presented that could provide
evidence for discussions that go well beyond the case. I
have roughly divided these into the following sections.
First, I look at the specific attraction for the political
elite of both the person Ali Hujwiri as well as his shrine
and what characteristics are particularly important in this
regard. Secondly, I look at the development of the Shrine
from its take over by the state until today. What is of
central importance here is that the political appropriation
and the enlargement of the Shrine had far-reaching

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consequences in various dimensions including the social

and the economic development of the area around it
and the position of the Shrine within the city. Thirdly, I
will examine the social importance of the Shrine with a
concentration on why it can be regarded the citys most
important social welfare centre, which, when facing turmoil
after a violent conflict, has shown a remarkable resilience.
In the fourth section the relationship between politics and
religion will again be dealt with, this time at a more abstract
level, looking at what could be called a move away from
shrine to mosque, from diversity in religious practice to
homogeneity and orthopraxy or from religion as a spiritual
involvement with the supernatural to religion as a set of
rules of proper behaviour, all of which has to be seen in
relation to Pakistans specific problems of nation building.
8.1 Person and Space as Identifiers

In the first two chapters following the introduction I have

dealt with the question why the Shrine of Data Ganj
Bakhsh was particularly well suited to become a symbol
of Sufism and Islam in Pakistan. To summarize: at the
time Pakistans shrines were nationalized, the Shrine of
Data Ganj Bakhsh had already seen an increase in visitors,
especially after the growth in Muslim population as a
result of the centurys largest migration process after the
establishment of India and Pakistan. It was also a shrine
popular with the middle class and one which was not
associated with any particular order. During Bhuttos
time, when shrines became important stages for public

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271

appearances, the Saint became narrated as a forerunner

to the socialist ideals of Muhammad Iqbal, Muhammad
Ali Jinnah and Bhutto himself. Given Bhuttos fear of not
being Islamic enough, the shrines provided a platform
for showing his connectedness both to the people and to
Islam. Ali Hujwiris ecumenical writings made him suitable
as an identifier for a large part of society and, therefore,
his shrine was particularly valuable in this regard. With
the inauguration of the golden gate Bhutto initiated a
process that would become a major aspect of the Shrines
development: the personal influence of the countrys
political leaders in the architecture of the place.
Bhutto envisioned the Shrine to become a large complex but
by the time planning became serious, he had been replaced
by Zia ulHaq, both as Head of State as well as the leading
force behind the project. During Zias Islamization project
another aspect of Hujwiris writing became important, the
fact that he belonged to what has been termed the bashar,
(with the sharia, as opposed to bishar, without sharia) or
the law-abiding branch of Sufism. This made Hujwiri one
of few Sufis respected also amongst more orthodox Muslim
groups, such as the Deobandis, Ahl-e-Hadith or Salafis. Zias
personal devotion to the Saint also played a major role in
the development that was to follow shortly after he took
power, the making of Data Darbar Complex, a complex
the size of two football fields, with several basements and
a functional division of spaces. Zias aim of positioning
Pakistan at the core of the Muslim world was reflected
in an architecture that gave no reference to any local

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architectural styles. Instead, it symbolized both modernity

through the use of materials and design, and Muslim unity
through the use of stylistic elements taken from other parts
of the Muslim world. This was possible because the Saints
image did not contradict these notions.
In a sense, Hujwiri was as modern as many of the
nineteenth and twentieth century Muslim reformers,
constantly pointing to the decay of his time and criticizing
many Sufis for un-Islamic practices. His writing style
further exemplified this: his arguments were not put
forward in poetry with hidden or subversive messages,
but in an almost scientific style. The fact that Hujwiri had
travelled all over the Muslim world further contrasted him
with those Sufi saints closely associated with a particular
town or region. By the time of Zias death the main traits
of his personality useful as identifiers had been firmly
established, and future politicians who lacked both Bhuttos
and Zias imagination had little need to add to these.
The question that arises out of the appropriation of Ali
Hujwiri by the leading figures of Pakistans young political
history is why it was necessary at all to establish a link
between the government and a saint. Were the political
heroes Jinnah and Iqbal unsatisfactory as national
identification figures?
If we look at the way Jinnah in particular is remembered in
Pakistan today, he is without any doubt the father figure
of the country. However, in the lives of most Pakistanis he
plays almost no direct role. Even though Jinnah received a

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273

mausoleum, which can compete in architectural dimensions

with most shrines of major Pakistani saints (and even
resembles the style of the large Suhrawardiyya shrines of
Multan and Uch Sharif ), it hardly attracts the number of
visitors these shrines usually attract. Iqbal, himself inclined
towards Sufism and a poet, likewise received a mausoleum,
and, although not as impressive in size, was instead
given the most prominent location, side by side with the
Badshahi mosque of Lahore. While Jinnah was known as
a rather unreligious person, Iqbal was not. This has led
Anna Suvorova to ponder the question why he, unlike other
saints, is not revered in an accustomed manner today:
His power over the minds of the compatriots and acclamation
by the Western elite, his leading role in the historic drama
of the formation of Pakistan, his place in the memories of
subsequent grateful generations, led to the poets mausoleum
near the gates of Badshahi Masjid being transformed into one
of the main sights of Lahore. However, all these, as it turned
out, are landmarks on the way to worldly (let us concede even
worldwide) fame, but not to sainthood. [] These examples,
in my view, confirm that neither religious services, socially
significant work, a heroic death nor martyrdom by themselves
ensure a mans sainthood. A person, possessing great spiritual
energy, acquired the fame of a saint only if his deeds were
imbued with the radiance of the supernatural. (Suvorova
2004, 37)

Without this radiance of the supernatural, even the most

outstanding personalities of Pakistans history cannot
compete with the manifold persons who are revered all over
the country as saints and friends of God. Essentially, one

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could argue, this is a question of simple egoism, because

of the efficacy associated with the shrines of saints, but
not with the mausoleums of great leaders. This efficacy
is a result of the relationship between man and God. For
most people living on the subcontinent, hierarchy is the
defining element of social relations. A central concept
within these social relations is respect, which often
includes that persons more than one step higher in the
hierarchy are not approached directly. When trying to get
an interview with a former finance minister, for example,
one would not write to him personally but instead find a
person close to him, yet not as distant in the hierarchical
order, who would then pass on ones request. The concept
of saints as mediators can be understood in this regard,
because essentially one directs the wishes not to them, but
to God. The friends of God thus play a significant role in
any communication with God, regardless of whether one
is at the shrine or not. Apart from this, the saints are also
commonly associated with supernatural powers, which, for
example, protect the citizens of a city such as Lahore. What
may be central to the feeling of being protected is that the
spaces in which the saints are buried are viewed as being
permanent. While rulers come and go and their buildings
are torn down and others built, the shrines are viewed as
places of permanence.82
For a city like Lahore, only 30 kilometres away from the
Indian border (and also for many other places in danger
of floods and earthquakes), the thought of destruction is
not entirely alien and the permanence given to the place

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275

by shrines is therefore comforting. Remembering the

architects remark that it is the space itself with which the
saint is associated, not the building, it makes this comfort
understandable. After all, space can never be eradicated. A
common perception exemplifying this in Lahore is that as
long as Data Sahib is there, nothing will ever happen to the
city. Conversely, this expresses the belief that Data Sahib
will always be there.
It comes as little surprise, therefore, that saints qualify as
national heroes. However, the saints of Pakistan are often
associated not only with distinct regions but also with
distinct practices, cultures, languages and peoples. Often,
it has been their poetry, composed in one of the various
languages spoken as mother tongue all over the country,
that carries these local identities. As Uzma Rehman argues:
[] through their interpretations of the saints poetry, devotees
construct webs of meanings around their social positioning
that may not be always in conformity with the centres of
power, rather they appear to be subversions of the same. In
fact, the poetry becomes the source through which devotees
are able to rethink and renegotiate who they are at multiple
levelsreligious, spiritual, social, gender, and culturalagainst
the background of a broader social and religious context that
appears to marginalize them. (Rehman 2011, 6)

That one of the many saints of Pakistan would become

a symbol of national unity was, therefore, it seems, rather
unlikely, especially when considering the fear of separatism
prevalent in the years after independence and the separation
of East and West Pakistan.

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What we can learn from this case in this regard is that

religious authority can have an undisputed superiority
over political authority and still be usefully integrated in a
modern state if the person with which it is attributed fulfils
a number of requirements, most importantly a positive
reputation among all different parts of society. Apart from
this, the case of Ali Hujwiri shows how the state was able
to fill a vacuum in regard to the representation of the saint,
because he was not defined by a particular order. This, in
turn, is a direct result of the timely distance in which he
has lived. If one were to look for national heroes with a
religious authority useful to the state as a unifier, a good
place to start would be in the arrival of that religion in
the very territory over which that state holds control. This
has made Ali Hujwiri the main Islamic missionary of the
whole region in the eyes of many Pakistanis today, and since
Pakistan is Pakistan only because they became Muslims,
one could hardly find a more befitting identification figure.
8.2 The City Within

The appropriation by politicians and the enlargement of the

Shrine between the 1960s and 1990s has had a long-lasting
effect on the city that surrounds it. In this section, I will
summarize these effects and take a look at what they can
tell us about the relationship between city and the Shrine.
From being a simple shrine situated in a graveyard outside
of the city only eighty years ago, the Shrine has evolved
into a landmark for the city and a social and religious
centre, as well as a political one to some extent. The first

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277

development in this process was the establishment of a

residential area surrounding the Shrine, a process which
started before independence. The influence of the Shrine
on this area became stronger when those relying on the
Shrine financially, the sajjada nishins, had to start businesses
outside it, after they had been forced to relinquish their
control over the financial assets of the Shrine in 1960.
Until today, they remain the most important landholders
in the markets around the Shrine. The economic potential
of the Shrine for those living and working in shops in the
surrounding area increased with the numbers of visitors.
A fundamental change to the surroundings came when
space was needed for the enlargement. The space was made
by demolishing a large school, as well as many shops and
residential buildings. In regard to the relation of the Shrine
to the city, the demolition of buildings to the east of the
Shrine meant that it was now directly accessible and visible
from two of the most important roads of Lahore, Circular
Road and Lower Mall Road, as well as the important bus
station outside of the Bhati Gate of the Walled City. The
construction of a new mosque, the third largest in the
country, and a large roof garden in a later building phase
also made a visit attractive for those not venerating the
Saint. Both a visit to the mosque for prayer, regardless
of the Saint, and visiting the complex for recreational
purposes was now common practice. This and the fact that
the Shrine attracted more attention by politics and media
increased the number of visitors and gave new functions
to the space.

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In the immediate surroundings, i.e. the markets to the north

and south of the new complex, the increase in visitors to the
Shrine meant that a large number of customers for products
such as langar, grave sheets, caps, posters and CDsand
later DVDsopened up new possibilities for generating
income. The former bazaar for sanitary equipment in the
northern market was almost completely ousted in favour
of these new items. Possibly, the positive development of
the markets also made the sajjada nishin less critical of
the development the Shrine had taken under the Auqaf
Department, as they were among those profiting most in
financial regard.
The growing availability of food and the ever increasing
numbers of visitors also attracted a large class of poor
and largely uneducated people for whom possibilities of
informal labour emerged. The space additionally became
attractive for both small-scale criminals and organized
crime including prostitution.
The result of these developments was that the Shrine
became something like a city within the city, a place
where the city seems to be condensed. In fact, if one looks
at ways in which cities and urbanity have been defined,
there are a number of striking similarities to this Shrine
and, likely, sacred sites worldwide. The most simple and
earliest definitions of cities are those based on density and
centrality. Density in this regard refers to a number of
dimensions like density of population, commerce, cultural
institutions, but also crime and violence. The Shrine can
be regarded in most of these categories as being a space of

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279

high, if not the highest density within Lahore. The most

densely populated areas are found in its surroundings, not
to mention the number of visitors during urs. As far as
commerce is concerned, the markets around it stand out as
the only ones that are open throughout the night and all
through the year, regardless even of holidays. Rents paid
per day equal rents paid per month in other markets. The
Shrines centrality can be defined by the surplus in functions
it has for the city, most importantly the function as a public
scene and a centre for social welfare. This includes the Data
Darbar Hospital, which has patients from all over Pakistan
due to its reputation for eye treatment. Another remarkable
example of the Shrines centrality is that children who
have run away from their home in faraway places such as
Karachi or Gilgit, make their way to the Shrine to live off
the langar.
On a more local level, centrality is demonstrated by the
NGOs and the Child Protection Bureau based at the
complex, both of which have established their offices onsite because it is a central place for those they want to
provide their services for. Another example are the qawwali
sessions that serve for the performing groups as a stage to
present themselves in front of potential customers.
In religious terms the centrality is exemplified both by
the general conception of the Saint as being the ruler
or patron over the subcontinent and the saints (as well
as some politicians) asking him for permission to enter
it. In a more concrete sense the institutions, such as the
Muttahida Ulama Board and the institutions of the madrasa

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and research centre are important centres from where the

government can participate and to some extent control the
discourse on Islam in the country.
When sociologists discovered the city as a field of itself,
they expanded the definition of a city to entail the term
heterogeneity (cf. Wirth 1938; 4, 883). Heterogeneity, in
sociological terms, means that those living in the city
often have various geographical, religious, cultural and
economic backgrounds. This idea of the melting pot is
challenged today because of the increasing segregation in
many cities. In Lahore, therefore, the Shrine stands out as
one of very few places where rich and poor can be found,
including beggars and prime ministers. The shrine also
attracts various sects of Islam, which further demonstrates
this characteristic. Heterogeneity is also central to another
concept that is often closely associated with cities: the
concept of the city as public space. Given that the Shrine
is state-run and open for all segments of society, it can be
included in the category of public space.84 Ahmed A. Zayed
has dealt with shrines as public places in Egypt and views
public places as interactive, democratic, and meaningful
places, and [the] salient feature of a public place is that it
is a place owned by all people, a place in which individuals
learn how to behave together (Zayed 2009, 104). One
could argue that the Shrine, although being state-run, is
hardly owned by all people, since decisions are often made
by persons who have not been elected democratically, but
instead are either politically influential or have a strong
economic background, giving them the possibility to

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donate solutions. When it comes to learn(ing) how to

live together, however, the Shrine fulfils this function of
a public space, because many see in it a model for society,
a place that shows that living together despite various
differences is possible. That this should take place under
the control of the government is a view illustrated in the
following interview with a neighbour of mine from the
Walled City, who also again points out its centrality:
Whenever there is a religion that is widely spread, there must
be a centre. The centre of Islam is the house of God, the
Kaaba in Mecca. And in Saudi Arabia, if there is a speech for
juma prayer, it goes to the government and there it is checked.
They want to control the centre. And likewise Data Sahib is
the centre of all the shrines of Pakistan. So the juma prayer
should be delivered according to the government, because it
is like a centre. In other shrines, such as Mian Mir and Baba
Bulleh Shah, your speech can be different. But here speeches
should be according to the government. There should be at
least one place where we can all sit together. This is the only
shrine where we can sit together.85

Thus the strict control of behaviour at the Shrine is not

necessarily seen as a restriction but rather as a requirement
for all to sit together. In academic terms, we can say that
public space has its role and place in the city as a space of
gathering and exchange [that] has been treated as a kind of
glue that holds together the city and promises to generate
urban coherence and active use (Segal & Verbakel 2008, 8).
Segal and Verbakel point out that this view, however, needs
differentiation, because rather than a singular, continuous
sphere or space, the public today is better understood as

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a fragmentary interplay of multiple publics and multiple

groups (Ibid.). This relates well to another notion of cities
as key sites of representation (Amin & Graham 1997,
412), a clashing point for diverse subjectivities, ethnicities,
corporealities and spatialities (Ibid., 413). In Data Darbar,
both the generation of urban coherence and the clash
of diverse subjectivities can be observed almost daily. As
the terror attacks have shown, the fact that the place has
become a key site of representation has also made it a
particularly contested place.
The complexity of what a shrine is in regard to its
surrounding space is a good example of what Foucault
(1986, 24) has termed heterotopia:
There are [] probably in every culture, in every civilization,
real placesplaces that do exist and that are formed in the
very founding of societywhich are something like countersites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites,
all the other real sites that can be found within the culture,
are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. []
I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.

Data Darbar in many ways represents to many Lahoris an

effectively enacted utopia, or as the former administrator
of the Shrine put it: A place of pure gold. At the same
time however, Pakistan as a country is mirrored in the
complex when looking at the way decisions are negotiated,
politicians misuse their powers (e.g. in regard to the
Jahez Fund) or the fear and experience of terrorist attacks
influence various domains of life at the Shrine.

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8.3Fear vs. Faith: Social Welfare, Civil

Society and Resilience

Social Welfare is an important part of Islam, anchored in

the five pillars in form of zakat as the obligatory alms, but
also in voluntary form, known as sadakah, mentioned in
several suras (e.g. Quran 76:89). Because Muslims believe
that essentially everything belongs to God and they are
only the trustees of this wealth, a Muslim should utilize
this wealth in a socially beneficial way, which would then
grant them religious merit (White 2006, 14). There are
various ways in which actors at the Shrine of Data Ganj
Bakhsh earn this religious merit. Despite the fact that
services from almost all fields of social welfare are offered
at the Shrine, be it food, health, education or microfinance
credits, the groups that offer them have been entirely
neglected in the academic discussion of civil society in
Pakistan.86 The reason for this is that most of them define
their goals within an Islamic ideology instead of subjecting
it to the discourse of enlightenment and modernity, in
which the emergence of civil society is normally positioned
from a western point of view. Urs Geiser has therefore
made a distinction between visible and invisible parts
of Pakistans civil society, arguing that almost all groups
that have a religious background (or sometimes just an
Arabic name) are excluded from civil society by Western
donor agencies, NGOs or state actors within the field of
development (Geiser 2007). Given the enormous outreach
of social welfare at the Shrine, this could be one explanation
why no western actors have yet made use of it, while local
NGOs, not in any way attached with the Shrine before,

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have clearly seen the benefits of establishing offices on

the premises, given that much of the help is associated
with the Saint. The efficacy of the Saint and the Shrine to
transform peoples lives is thus extended to the work of the
NGOs. Provided that the trust of those targeted is a central
factor in whether or not development and social welfare
programs will actually succeed and bring about positive
change, this aspect should not be neglected. Looking at all
the actors involved in social welfare activities at the Shrine,
only one stands out as what we could term a visible civil
society, which is the NGO working with runaway children
(seeFig.33).
There might also be another reason why civil society and
other actors involved in social welfare working at the Shrine
have been overlooked by western actors. Sacred sites are
in many countries contested places and associated with

Figure 33: Social welfare actors at the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh include groups
and persons from all parts of society. Civil society is also involved at various levels,
but what is visible to Western actors could be regarded as just the tip of the iceberg.

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285

violent conflicts (cf. Hassner 2006). While sites like the

Hamandir Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar, are also
known for their communal kitchens and their free-of-cost
hostels, sacred sites in South Asia make it into Western
news mainly when becoming sites of violence. The most
famous examples are the incidents in the Golden Temple in
1984 and at the site of the Babri Mosque in 1992. But also
more recently, especially in Pakistan, the attacks on shrines
have increased. The reasons why shrines are attacked are
normally associated with the fact that those responsible for
the attacks are critical of the practices at the shrines.
In contrast to this view, I would argue that the Shrine
of Data Ganj Bakhsh was mainly attacked as a place
representing the state and as a public space. In an article
entitled The Taliban, Public Space, and Terror in Pakistan
(2010), Daanish Mustafa and Katherine E. Brown have
looked in detail at terrorism in Pakistan in the recent
decade and point out that the objective [of terrorism] is to
control public spaces by restricting access to these places
as well as the activities that are permitted to be carried out
within them (Ibid., 496). They also state that the focus is
on place and the spectacle: you are the victim of terrorism if
you are subjected to violence not because of who you are or
what you have done, but by virtue of where you are (Ibid.,
497). Thus, besides confining public life, terrorism also
creates geographies of fear (Ibid.). Important questions are
therefore in how far (1) public life, including the activities
by civil society, has been confined at the Shrine after the
attacks, and (2) how far the image or perception of the

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place has changed from being a place of comfort to being

a place of fear.
Immediately after the attacks, confinements at the Shrine
were strong, especially for those providing social welfare, as
the example of the langar distributing groups has shown.
This, however, was only the case for a relatively short
time. Most services in the realm of social welfare were
re-established when I visited the Shrine five months after
the attacks, but confinements for visitors were still evident,
even two years later. It takes more time to enter the Shrine
and for the most part it is not allowed to bring anything
inside the complex. Compared to the restrictions that have
been made to behaviour inside the complex in the recent
decade by the administration, however, I would argue that
the attacks have not had a strong impact. Overall, fewer
people are said to have visited the Shrine after the attacks,
but two years later donations are almost back to what they
were before the attacks, indicating that most visitors have
returned.
Despite looking more like a fortress than a shrine, anyone
can enter the complex and as far as the activities by the civil
society are concerned, these have not been affected in the
long-term, so that one could say that the public sphere has
not been considerably confined through the attacks.
But in how far are those present suffering from fearing
another attack? Has the Shrine become a part of the
geographies of fear, that can be experienced in other places
of the city, for example in theatres or concert halls, that

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287

have stopped advertising their activities, or in the markets

that have been targeted, where people are reluctant to
spend more time than necessary? If we return to the way
most people interpreted the attacks we can negate this. The
attacks did not harm the image of the Saint as a protector.
The concentration on the faithful hero, the volunteer Salim
Akhtar, as well as the way in which the attacks impact was
put to scale by comparing it to what could have happened
and how many people could have died, has led many to
view the attack as a tragic but not traumatic event. This
resilience towards a potentially traumatic event is based
on the strong faith in the Saint. That the Saint protects
everyone could almost be called an incorrigible idiom
(cf Mehan & Wood, 365), an unquestionable fact that
cannot be proven wrong. The fact that those visiting the
Shrine and working there both within the administration
and as volunteers have this faith, gives the space a strong
resilience towards crisis. Resilience here is understood
as [focusing] on peoples and/or systems capacities to
cope with, recover from and adapt to various risks and
adversities, and direct[s] attention to the ways in which
the state and the civil society can enhance or erode these
capacities (Obrist 2010, 279). As psychologists found, a
decisive factor in developing resilience may be the way
individuals perceive and process an experience. People who
develop interpretative patterns of coping and attempt to
modify the present positively may find it easier to overcome
psychological traumas (Peres etal. 2007, 346), or in short:
A structured narrative seems to be a key factor in resilience
to traumatic events (Ibid.,349).

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What is noteworthy about the terrorist attacks at the

Shrine with regard to the resilience of the social welfare
institutions, as well as the visitors and especially the
volunteers, is that the involved parties did not simply
react to the attacks but were those who, in contrast to the
police, considerably lessened the impact of the attacks.
This is particularly interesting because we have seen that
these groups are overlooked as part of civil society. Based
on their religiosity they are put into a category sometimes
described as uncivil society, i.e. civil society associated with
Islam. Essentially however, it is this religiosity in form of
the strong faith in the Saint and God that did not produce
but oppose terror. The action by Salim Akhtar is the most
striking in this regard, choosing almost certain death to
save others. What strongly supports the existence of social
responsibility, so essential to the Western concept of civil
society, is the fact that other volunteers were tying to calm
the situation by announcing a generator had simply blown
up, and that those volunteers who had the duty of making
people line-up to approach the tomb windows were still
on duty after the first attack. In contrast, all the police
officers had left their posts, making it easy for the second
suicide bomber to enter the complex. We can thus conclude
that civil society in the form of the so-called Faith-Based
Organizations play a significant role to protect the public
sphere from the attacks of those who try to confine it. In
this regard, Data Darbar not only is an example of how
shrines can be important centres of social welfare and
a lively civil society, but also represents the particularly
resistant and resilient character of these institutions

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289

towards crisis like violent conflicts. In a larger perspective,

this should change common perceptions of Faith-Based
Organizations in Pakistan with regard to the development
debate. Furthermore, it shows the potential sacred sites
offer for the provision of social welfare, especially in places
where crises are to be expected regularly, be it in form of
violent conflicts or natural hazards.
8.4The Shrine as Meeting Place for the
State and Public

On several occasions I have pointed out that the

nationalization of Data Darbar has changed the Shrine
and the activities inside it in a direction away from being
a place associated with various religions, practices and
beliefs and towards a place symbolizing one Islam. In his
study on the built environment of Punjabi shrines under
the control of the Auqaf Department, Ghafer Shahzad
has worked out this shift with regard to the architecture
of the shrines: Unfortunately, in the second half of the
twentieth century, when reconstruction and expansion at
the Shrine of Hazrat Ali Hujwiri was conceived by the
architect, mosque, representative of sharia, was designed
and constructed as dominating feature. This first example
laid down the foundations for a new type of shrine complex
where mosque, instead of shrine became more significant.
The pattern was followed at shrines of Baba Farid, Bulleh
Shah and Sakhi Saiden Shirazi. [sic] (Shahzad 2010,
112). Today, the burial place of a Sufi does not look like
a shrine complex. It would be more appropriate to call

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it a Mosque Complex where shrine appears as a small

component. Mosque is a path of sharia where as shrine is
a path of tariqat (the mystical path of Sufism) (Ibid., 280).
Shahzad thus conceptualizes the architectural changes as a
shift away from the mystical path of Islam towards sharia.
He clearly identifies the starting point for this development
in the construction of the Data Darbar mosque. What
supports his argument are the recent developments that
have turned the roof garden, envisioned originally as a
compensation for the green courtyards of shrines often
filled with trees, into a marbled area, resembling the
mosque courtyard instead.
Leaving the architecture aside, one could argue the same
point by looking only at the activities in the area, which I
would call the public scene of the Shrine or the upper floor.
Until 2008, this area was both open to women and for the
distribution of langar, two distinct features of shrines that
have since been banned. The langar has now found its space
underneath this area, and the women have been confined to
the womens side of the Shrine. Other practices associated
with shrines had already been banned earlier or, as was the
case with the qawwali sessions, that also were transferred
to the basement of the complex. In comparison, one finds
today numerous activities taking place in the mosque
courtyard that would not normally happen at a shrine,
e.g. the naat (poetry about the Prophet) competitions and
seminars held during urs. I would thus strongly agree with
Ghafer Shahzad that a shift has taken place. However,
I would add that this shift is not only about what the

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Shrine and mosque as buildings represent, but also what

functions these have for Muslims. The mosque is essentially
a place for assembly, and a place for homogenizing, for the
community to act together (cf. Mazumdar & Mazumdar
2004, 389, citing Sopher 1967). Prayer in a mosque is
characterized mostly by all Muslims praying simultaneously,
standing in line. The Shrine, on the contrary, is in many
cases a place of personal prayer. I would therefore argue
that in order to make a shrine a place for the government
to define a religious identity and to prescribe a certain
behaviour, an essential shift must occur, one from the shrine
to the mosque, from individual prayer and the quest for
a mystical revelation towards an assembly of Muslims to
enact their community in prayer towards one God. The
most important way in which the Shrine is used to address
the people is through the addresses made at juma prayer in
the mosque and through the seminars held in the Mosque.
The Shrine in contrast serves more as a place to be seen at,
e.g. during the chaddar poshi ceremony, which opens the urs
festival, but most importantly as the magnet that attracts
people in the first place (apart from those only visiting the
Shrine because of the air-conditioned mosque).87
We have seen that the Islam represented at the Shrine and
through the various institutions based here is not one of a
particular sect. One cannot say, for example, that the state
promotes Sunni Islam as opposed to Shia Islam or Barelwi
Islam as opposed to Deobandi Islam at the Shrine. Instead,
Islam is represented in a way that downplays the differences
between these sects and instead concentrates on common

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aspects. Here, those in charge, e.g. the Research Officer,

the Principal of the madrasa, the Chief Administrator and
Zone Administrator, the Religious Purpose Committee
Chairman and the Khateeb Imam can rely to a large part
on the writing of Ali Hujwiri because of its ecumenical
character. This in turn legitimizes why they hold seminars
about topics like the Prophets family or terrorism, as Ali
Hujwiri has dealt with a large variety of topics in the Kashf
al-Mahjub.
Apart from contributing to the discourse on Islam through
speeches, education and print media, such as pamphlets,
posters, booklets and books, the state also contributes
through defining proper behaviour at the Shrine. The
necessity to do so is explained by Uzma Rehman: The issue
of religious identities in Pakistan is closely linked with the
processes of defining the overall ideological identity of the
state. Due to the intense debates on the Islamic identity of
Pakistan represented by political and religious sections of
the society, views on Islam have taken different directions.
Analytically speaking, during a major part of Pakistans
history the issues of Islamic ideology dealt more with what
constitutes real Islam and what is and what is not Islamic
(Rehman 2006, 21).
To define what is and what is not Islamic at the Shrine
means to first define what falls within the realm of
Islamic behaviour and what does not. Secondly, it requires
appropriate measures to ensure that all visitors of the
shrine act accordingly. I have dealt with this aspect to some
extent: control is mainly exercised through banning such

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behaviour that is believed to cause criticism within the

Muslim community, the majority of which are a growing
class of people who could be considered orthodox, e.g.
Ahl-e-Hadith or Deobandis. It would be futile for the state,
however, to attempt to set up a shrine administration that
can please all the various groups. Many of the practices
that are considered un-Islamic by some people, mostly
those who rarely visit the Shrine, are an essential part to
the way Islam is practiced at the Shrine for others. This
problem is at the core of the work of the administration
and management of the Shrine. Not only can we find
people among the employees representing different sects,
but many also have a different view of how to deal with
these differences. One informant once pointed out that one
administrator had been a strict opponent of the veneration
of saints in general but still had treated the Shrine and
those venerating the Saint with respect and overall had
been a good administrator. Additionally, as Katherine
Ewing has shown, the rifts going through Pakistani society
are found not only between individuals but also within
them. Despite this, a major difference in perspective among
the employees does not result from their religious beliefs
but from their position in the overall hierarchy of the
Shrines management, i.e. at which level they take part in
the decisions and their execution.
Roughly, the employees can be divided into three groups.
The first group consists of the highest level of bureaucrats,
namely the Chief Administrator Auqaf and the Zone
Administrator, who are formally and legally in charge but

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normally are in office for short terms only and rely heavily
on the second group in their decisions. This group is
made up by those bureaucrats who have been in the Auqaf
Department of the Shrines administration for several years
and either hold posts like that of a director or manager of a
specific field within the department, or are higher officers
at the Shrine. The third group then is a large group of
people with relatively low influence, but who still have to
execute decisions in the cause of which they might have
some restricted powers, such as a guard who can wake-up
sleeping visitors and tell them to go for prayer.
I would argue that the first group can be said to most
closely represent the views and requirements of the state,
as they are directly appointed by the government through
the Chief Minister of Punjab. The third group in contrast
largely represents the common people, having no longterm affiliation with a particular government because they
are too unimportant to be changed whenever someone new
comes to power. The second group however, is the most
interesting, because these are the people who formally
execute power over their subordinates and informally
have influence on their superiors as well, as the latter
have to rely on their judgement. They are also the people
who have an understanding both for the requirements of
the government and the daily needs of those visiting the
Shrine. From an analytical point of view it is here, in this
group, that the negotiation between state interest and
individual interest takes place. Unfortunately, this group of
people, which I would call second row bureaucrats, has not

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been given enough attention in Pakistan, although one can

safely assume that they play a similar role in many state
institutions, other than the Auqaf Department and the
administration of the Shrine. This might have to do with
the general perception of bureaucrats as a kind of slow
machine. What this study has shown in contrast is that
this group of people often do their job with a particular
devotion, fully taking on the responsibility, something
many politicians shy away from, and to constantly negotiate
between the short-term needs of the people and the longterm interests of the state.
8.5 Final Remarks

In this study, a shrine has been described that in many

regards is exceptional. Many Pakistani shrines are similarly
unique. Some, for example, only attract a distinct group of
people, some are famous for granting specific wishes and
others stand out as being visited by Muslims and Hindus
alike. In Lahore, we thus find various shrines, for example
the shrine of Madho Lal Husain, whose close friendship
with the Hindu buried next to him is known to everyone.
There is also the shrine of Shah Jamal, popular for its
Thursday nights drumming sessions. Differences also exist
in the various rules that are being applied at the shrines
by the administrations. While Data Darbar is known for
its strict division of gender, the shrine of Bibi Pakdamman
has two different entrances and parts of the shrine reserved
for Sunnis and Shias. All of these examples show how
heterogeneous shrines are in Pakistan. Only one shrine has

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however become the space were we can all sit together,

and this study has dealt with this characteristic in detail.88
Despite the concentration on this one shrine, however,
there is an important aspect to it that can only be seen
in relation to the many other shrines. As I have pointed
out a number of times, Pakistani governments, be they
federal or provincial, when involving themselves into the
administration of shrines, face the fundamental problem of
having to accommodate various views about shrines. If they
let the shrines stay the way they are, they face criticism;. if
they change them, likewise. Those inside the Department
of Auqaf and Religious Affairs and even more so those who
work inside the administration of the shrines directly, are
well aware of this problem. Many negotiate between various
actors and interests on a daily basis.
In a broader sense, the various governments in control of
the shrines have taken a pragmatic approach, different to
those of Ayub Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto or Zia ulHaq,
who each had their agendas for the use of the shrines. This
pragmatic approach is characterized by the fact that, while
there are some trends in the administration of the shrines,
such as the concentration on large shrines, many shrines are
administered each in its specific way. The changes at Data
Darbar are therefore only representative to a certain degree,
and in a sense, they are only possible because other shrines
are not changed in this way. When comparing Data Darbar
with other shrines of the country, one cannot but think
that it is somehow the least Pakistani shrine of all, because
it represents little of the customs and practices typical of

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the countrys shrines in general. This feeling is supported

by the architecture of the Shrine. What in the end is the
most striking feature of the Shrine to me, and surely tells
us something about the country, is that it is exactly this
feature that has made the Shrine so well-suited to defining
a national identity.