Beyond Religion in India and Pakistan by Navtej K. Purewal Virinder S. Kalra

Author:Navtej K. Purewal, Virinder S. Kalra [Navtej K. Purewal, Virinder S. Kalra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350266308
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Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2021-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 5 Grave markings at a shrine of Gugga Pir, Chandigarh-Patiala Road.

Photo courtesy of authors

Figure 6 Grave tombstones at a shrine of Gugga Pir, Chandigarh-Patiala Road.

Photo courtesy of authors

Each of the graves has a slot in which clay lamps and steel trays with mini-incense can be placed. ‘Jai’ (‘long live’) is an appellation used generically with deities, deified dead and living spiritual figures. The indication given in brackets above in no way reduces this process of naming to the single well-known site. Again, ‘Nau Gaja pir’ (‘nine yard pir’) refers to the height of the figure buried: guz is the Persian/Mogul measurement, the equivalent of a yard and nau is ‘nine’, hence ‘nine-yard pir’. The analysis offered here and the connections being made to a wider set of classified traditions does not arise from conversations with devotees, who at this particular shrine are mainly drawn from a local factory. For them, the growth of the site is merely proof of the power of the spiritual figures being referenced, most suggestively Gugga Pir himself. The site also contains a bazaar of small shrines with statues ranging from Goraknath to Shiva. The point here is to emphasize that the symbolism of five transcends religious traditions and even as a naming device is not fixed.20

What and who is creating the attraction to attend these shrines if they are not drawing from historically verifiable centres of spiritual or material power? If they are not structured into a hierarchy which is generally masculine and high caste, through which spiritual power is bequeathed from ‘God’ to the ‘Saint’ and then the ‘devotees’, is it possible for shrines to operate within alternative architectures? These shrines which host heteropraxy provide ample evidence for one of our general theses: that the kind of religion which retains popular support is created and exists alongside and outside of the formal authority-making institutions and processes. Even though the form of the Panj Pir can be traced to religious traditions in various ways, the choice of whose names are painted in handwriting on the tomb structures rests with the workers and devotees who take part in the construction of the site in the first place. The naming of known figures is an important aspect of this procedure but there is no pre-determined list or hierarchy out of which these sites of veneration emerge. This is a subalternity which is mimicking power structures but is not being tamed by them; a creativity that moulds whatever is available into sacred sites that are meaningful outside of normative modes of religion. Given the choice of sites, our previous examples can be described as ‘anachronistic’, ‘unusual’, ‘strange’ or ‘out of the ordinary’: terms used in academic discourse and which belie a normative view. Normativity of outlook is, however, challenged by popular wisdom. This couplet ascribed to both Ghulam Farid and Bulleh Shah, but equally and possibly to an unknown twentieth-century poet, comes to us through a rendition by Abida Parveen:21

People say to Majnu, your Laila is Dark

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