PASSING DOWN
THE SPIRIT
QAWWĀLI, DHAMĀL
AND THE PURSUIT OF
HĀL AT THE SEHWAN
SHARĪF MELA
DAVID LEWIS
CONTENTS
Page no.
Content
3
Profile and Summary
6
Location
7
Log
29
Acknowledgement
30
Appendix I: Glossary
2 PROFILE AND SUMMARY
PROFILE
David Lewis graduated in 2012 with a BA in Geography
from
Oxford
and
is
currently
a
second-year
MA
candidate in South Asian Studies at the University of
Pennsylvania, focusing on Pashto language. His primary
interest lies in the southwest Asia and over the past
6 years has accrued both work and travel experience in
the region.
SUMMARY
The following report is the product of a four-week
research
trip
to
Pakistan
in
June
2014,
kindly
supported by a Travelling Fellowship from the Winston
Churchill Memorial Trust.
The purpose of the trip had initially been to conduct
research
on
the
composition,
symbolism
and
contemporary significance of the Sufi qawwali song.
However, in-country the focus of the research shifted
towards
a
more
holistic
understanding
on
Sufi
practices more broadly in contemporary Pakistan. In
turn, attention was paid to other dhikr practices such
as the dhamāl, matam and their collective performances
at the Sehwan Sharīf mela.
In
conducting
throughout
transport,
this
Pakistan
stopping
research,
with
in
the
author
pilgrims
Lahore,
travelled
using
Multan,
Dera
local
Ghazi
Khan, Dadu, Sehwan and Karachi. In these locations
3 unstructured interviews, participant observation and
videography were used to document the findings.
The primary finding of the research was that of an
incredibly rich and historic tradition in Pakistan of
Shia Sufi practices of qawwāli, dhamāl and matam that
finds
itself
under
violent
threat
from
more
conservative Sunni elements of contemporary society.
The emphasis of Sufi practices on ecstasy (especially
hāl) dance, music, shrines and objects of worship has
increasingly
growing
put
its
current
of
practitioners
conservatism
at
odds
propagating
th
orthodoxy in Pakistan since the late 20
with
a
Islamic
century. The
consequence has been a decrease in the visibility of
Sufi rituals in public spaces and an increase in the
symbolism and significance of dhikr practices in the
Sufi
pursuit
of
hāl;
no
longer
simply
religious
ritual, the pursuit of hāl becomes a cathartic conduit
for practitioners subject to violent discrimination.
Having
collected,
conclusions
from
assessed
the
data
and
drawn
collected
the
above
during
the
research trip, the next phase of the project is the
dissemination of the findings detailed in this report.
To
date,
the
findings
have
feature-length
article
by
been
Al
published
Jazeera
as
a
English
(http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/07/shi
a-pilgrims-flock-pakistan-sufi-shrine201473175829740724.html)
published
in
the
and
Royal
are
scheduled
Geographical
to
be
Society’s
‘Geographical’ magazine in Spring 2015. Presently I am
also in contact with the Oxford University Exploration
Club, the Scientific Exploration Society, Wilderness
Award and The Judd School in order to arrange lectures
4 (supported
with
photography
and
video)
with
their
respective members.
5 LOCATION
Figure 1 Route undertaken by author
(Source: Google Maps)
WAYPOINTS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Lahore (Punjab)
Multan (Punjab)
Dera Ghazi Khan (Punjab)
Dadu (Sindh)
Sehwan (Sindh)
Karachi (Sindh)
6 LOG
PART ONE
LAHORE, PUNJAB
Lahore, cultural capital of Pakistan, was where the
research trip began in early June 2014. Whilst
typically known for its restaurants and Mughal
architecture, Lahore is also one of the biggest
centres of qawwāli music in the country. Upon arrival
I met the famous Bader Ali Khan qawwāli clan. In their
freshly pressed white shalwar tunics with delicate
golden embroidery, the clan picked me up on the Mall
Road before we dashed through the streets of Ānārkali
towards the Data Ganj Bakhsh shrine, where an
afternoon of qawwāli performances awaited.
Amidst growing sectarian violence in Pakistan towards
the Shia minority and a string of recent complex
attacks, security was tight at the shrine and police
appeared tense. Waved through the security checks by
Bader Ali Khan, a local celebrity by any means, the
inner sanctum of the shrine instead had an atmosphere
that was calm and cool. Scattered across the marble
floor were groups of performers from all across the
Punjab, slowly tuning tabla drums and leafing through
songbooks of scrawled Farsi and Urdu verse.
When summoned to their turn, the last performers of
the afternoon, Bader Ali Khan and his brother slipped
on a white skullcap, tucked a lock of oiled black hair
behind his ear and strode towards the stage. Once
seated in a staggered formation, they paused to
prolong the air of anticipation before filling the
room with an elaborate Urdu rhyming couplet. The
harmonium followed suit with a drawn-out note, then
the lone tap of a tabla before all three elements
descended into a torrent of complementary rhymes,
rhythms and tones.
7 Figure 2
Bader Ali Khan sings qawwāli
The crowd listened on, occasionally erupting with a
‘Wah, wah!’ (‘Wow, wow!’) and tossing 10 Rupee notes
into the air. As a dense pile collected at the
performers’ feet a spectator rose from the crowd, his
eyes closed and violently shook his head to the tempo
of the tabla beat. Slowly raising his hands up towards
the sky, he jerked his body towards then away from the
sound in apparent enrapture before falling to the
floor where he had been sitting. Little, if any,
notice was paid to the spectator’s convulsive outburst
and it became clear that something very powerful was
at work in the performance of qawwāli that was central
enough to its ethos that my astonishment, as an
outsider, was not shared by any other spectators.
Qawwāli, as Badar Ali Khan explained over a steamy cup
of tea in a side street after the performance, is
intended to ‘attack the heart’ of the listener while
‘emptying the heart of the performer’.
8 A few days later at the Baba Shah Jamal shrine, tablas
were swapped for large-barrelled dhols and palms for
hooked sticks to strike the drum skins. Whereas Data
Ganj Bakhsh is the locus of qawwāli in Lahore, Baba
Shah Jamal can be considered the centre of the dhamāl.
Traditionally a North Indian dance, the dhamāl is an
essential part of Sufi practice in Pakistan. The
movement is based on bodily rotation, as well as the
circumambulation of dancers around the drummers
maintaining the rhythm. The drummers’ control over the
movement between low and high tempos controls the
performance. Dancers drop their heads, beginning with
slow, emphatic steps around a large circle before
building up to the eventual violent headshaking and
whirling, arms parallel to the ground and palms raised
towards the sky symbolising their gesture as an
attempt to reach God. Spectators look on excitedly,
closely packed and cross-legged on the shrine floor.
In the darkness of power-cut, the air was dotted with
the bright orange glow of ‘dabl-cigarettes’ (tobacco
cigrettes mixed with hashish).
I wanted to understand more about the significance of
the dance to its practitioners and arranged an
interview with Mittu Sain, one of the best-known
drummers performing at Baba Shah Jamal. Mittu claimed
his father has been attending Sufi shrines for the
past 60 years or so, whereas the tradition of dhol
drumming runs for roughly 150 years through the
family’s generations.
On a bridge in a residential suburb of Lahore, he
greeted us on a small Honda motorbike with his son
precariously balanced before him. Signalling over his
shoulder, we followed Mittu through the narrow
alleyways of his neighbourhood towards his home. We
were led through to the hujra, a room set aside for
entertaining
guests
and,
in
the
midday
heat,
regretfully closed the doors and turned off the fans
for the best sound-recording quality.
The interview aimed to unpack the concept of hāl and
its significance in the eyes of Mittu Sain, as one of
the primary drummers at Baba Shah Jama. For a Sufi
musician with international touring and interviewing
experience, I was taken aback by the intensity of the
engagement with which Mittu met my questioning; while
I sat sodden in the closed-off room, fumbling with the
voice recorder slipping in my hands, Mittu remained
regally still, without breaking his eye-contact
despite the sweat beads inching down his face. Below
are some selected quotes from the interview;
9 ‘There are Muslims who pray five times a
day and go to the mosque but many are
still separated from God. As Sufis, we
also pray but have many other rituals as
well [such as dhamāl]. Through these
[rituals] we have a connection with God.’
‘Dhamāl is the faqir’s ecstasy…a totally
different feeling, like that of jumping
into a pool of water.’
‘Hāl has many meanings. On a basic level
it means ‘condition’, such as the question
‘Kiya hāl hai?’ [How are you?]. But it is
also a kind of ecstasy. When you are
dancing you can feel mastī but when you
feel hāl, then you are not conscious of
yourself. You don’t know where you are nor
what you are doing; you can get hurt but
you would be unaware of the sensation.’
‘God said that whoever loves
my presence in their body,
their feet etc. … [So] we
order to become acquainted
that moment.’
me will feel
their hands,
enter hāl in
with God in
The conviction in Mittu’s words was powerful. Having
met with Badar Ali Khan and witnessed his ‘attack’ on
the hearts of the scores in the audience at Data Ganj
Bakhsh and talked through the significance of hāl with
with Mittu Sain, I organised a private performance of
Sufi folk music with the Sayyi Yusuf. On the outskirts
of Lahore, Sayyi Yusuf stood in flowing red, silverembroidered cloth and a heavy bejewelled necklace
resting on his chest. His head was covered by a
tightly wrapped black turban, through which locks of
henna-dyed hair fell at the back.
10 Figure 3
Sayyi Yusuf sings Bulleh Shah poetry
As he stood before the tomb of a local saint in a
nearby graveyard, Sayyi Yusuf adjusted the metal picks
on his fingers before plucking the first chord into
11 the evening air. Tilting his head back and closing his
eyes, the familiar build up and descent of the dhamāl
and qawwāli performances could be identified. ‘Āllahhu, āllah-hu! (God is, God is!)’, Sayyi cried out
amidst the bare trees and dried earthen mounds
surrounding us, turning on the spot and pattering his
feet on the ground while singing the poems of 18th
century Punjabi Sufi, Bulleh Shah;
‘Oh! I have been to the mullah and to the
pandit, / imploring people to help me find
God / but I can’t find him among them.
I am trying to remove this burden of love
/ by singing the praises of God.’
With the words of Bulleh Shah still strongly in my
mind, I sought further background understanding of the
role of dhamāl, qawwāli and the pursuit of hāl from a
local contact in Lahore, Shafqat Hussain. My meetings
with Sayyi Yusuf, Mittu Sain and Badar Ali Khan showed
Sufi dhikr practice to be at great (ritual) odds with
the popular, orthodox portrayal of Islam in Englishspeaking media, especially with its emphasis of
personal connection with God through dhikr rather than
mediated by place and individuals such as the mosque
and mullah.
Figure 4
Qalandriya devotees at shrine
12 Amidst his revisionist historical account of the
Marxist origins of Sufism in southern Pakistan,
Shafqat did offer a useful early insight into these
ritual practitioners’ motives;
‘We can say that it [dhamāl and qawwāli]
is a cathartic kind of thing, when your
inner self is dominating your present
situation…The real person comes out and
then mastī, hāl and liberty follow. And
you enjoy your liberty, but not as a
conscious kind of act…because your inner
self is dominating you; you are with open
hair, you are not considering your clothes
– even if you are a woman – and you are
sweating…but you are dancing!’
In addition to shedding light on the intimate
experience of hāl, Shafqat was also able to point out
the growing divide between Sufi practice and the
belief system of conservative Deobandi Islam as
propagated by the state, the evidence for which I’d
already encountered at the stringent security checks
of the Data Ganj Bakhsh. In 2010 a bomb blast at the
shrine left 42 dead and at least 175 injured. Despite
the introspective focus of these singing and dancing
rituals, Sufi shrines and devotees in Pakistan have
increasingly been targeted by more conservative
elements of the country's Sunni majority community.
Moreover, the community's activities in KhyberPakhtunkhwa province have been forced underground.
Pakistan's Shia community as a whole fares even worse,
particularly in the province of Balochistan where
rapidly escalating violence has left dead hundreds of
Hazara Shias since 2008 alone. ‘We live in fear,’ a
friend in Karachi explained;
‘Each year when we meet for the annual
matam, during Muharram, someone will ask
"Hey, where's that guy?" and someone will
have to explain how he was shot on his way
to work or buying groceries in the bazaar.
This is the reality we face.’
In spite of these pressures and violent threats, the
practices of dhamāl, qawwāli and matam and up to a
million pilgrims converge once a year for an event in
a small town in Pakistan’s Sindh province: the Sehwan
Sharīf festival (or mela). If I was to come any closer
to understanding his explanation of the pursuit of hāl
as a ‘cathartic kind of thing’, Shafqat told me I had
to make the journey to Sehwan. It was advice with
13 which Mittu and I had parted a few days earlier, too;
‘if you go to the mela, you will see what Sufism
really is’.
PART TWO
INTERIOR PUNJAB AND SINDH
The journey began just after midnight, from the Kamyar
Pura district of Lahore. Out of devotion to the 13th
century Sufi Saint, Lal Shahbaz Qalander (or The Red
Falcon), a group of Qalandriya Shias led by community
leader, Mudho Sain, began a pilgrimage that would take
them to shrines throughout Pakistan's Punjab, Sindh
and Baluchistan provinces. Central to the Qalandriya
ethos is the principle of ascetism and, in turn,
unconditional love, devotion and submission before God
in the pursuit of ecstatic divine presence and unity.
Welcoming my presence on the bus, Mudho declared:
‘If someone has fallen in love with [Lal
Shahbaz] Qalandar he will come [to Sehwan
Sharīf ], whatever stands in his way …
[for] his heart is filled with the gentle
words of Ali. Everything is Qalandar in
this
world
…
[and]
our
love
is
directionless.’
Mudho Sain hurried about frantically with pen and
paper in hand, trying to ensure everyone was accounted
for. The last few stragglers clambered onto the roof
of the bus and haphazardly- tied bundles of roti and
biryāni were passed up through the windows. Once each
passenger had drunk a glass of rosewater, the bus
chugged into motion. Amidst the hooting and waving, a
young man pinched his right ear between his thumb and
forefinger, closed his eyes and projected a drawn-out
call into the air; ‘Nār-e Haider?’ (‘What is the
slogan of the lion?’). Fellow pilgrims tilted their
heads back in anticipation before forcefully nodding
with a communal cry; ‘Ya, Ali!’
14 Figure 5
Pilgrims share food on the road
From Lahore, the tasseled red flag on the bus’ roof
rippled as we moved southwards towards Sehwan. Along
the way, the pilgrims paid their respects at a number
of shrines in Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Baba Karim
Shah. At each stop, the dhol players would strike up a
fervent beat on their huge wooden-barreled drums,
forming a column of devotees behind them. Leading the
procession was spiritual leader, Murshid Mudassar
Shah, solemnly walking barefooted towards the shrine.
His thick metal ankle-rings clinked with each step.
Once in the shrine, devotees circumambulated the inner
sanctum, stopping occasionally to place a forehead on
the rose-petal bedecked veil covering the tomb and
whisper a few words of prayer before returning to the
bus.
15 Figure 6
Murshid Mudassar Shah in Sindh
Inside the bus, the atmosphere was a quintessential
mix of the pains of long-distance land travel with the
perseverant joviality that accompanies any journey on
the subcontinent, especially a religious pilgrimage.
At times it seemed we were engaging in nothing more
than a fruitless battle against sun, driving into the
furnace of Sindh’s desert landscapes. ‘Bari garmi
hai!’ ('What a big heat!'), adults declared to each
another with eyes closed and a slow shake of the head.
Children pestered parents over whether there was a
metal cupful of ‘thanda pani’ (cool water) left.
Fellow passengers woke each other up if the sun had
moved onto their face, men wiped an index finger
across their forehead before casting the sweat into
the gangway and women waved scraps of cardboard in
front of their children to cool them down. Each
morning, it was a matter of holding one's breath a
little bit more as the number of passengers inside the
bus doubled; those who had slept on the roof now
decided they wanted a seat out of the sun.
16 Figure 7
Dhol drummers take rest atop the bus
Despite
the
difficulties,
the
bus
retained
an
unmistakable atmosphere of excitement and anticipation
for the mela ahead. Young men were commissioned with a
yell by their seniors to roll ‘dabl sigrets’ (tobacco
mixed with hashish) and crack open watermelons to
distribute. Elders pressed their palms together before
their
chest,
exclaiming
‘Shaabaash,
shaabaash!’
(‘Bravo, bravo!’) in response to the rhyming couplets
of qawwāli songs ringing through the bus.
As the bus began to slow down a young Sindhi boy in a
dusty pistachio shalwār kamīz jumped in through the
open rear door. Balancing a steel bowl of glistening
coconut slices on his shoulder, he weaved his way in
between luggage, vomit, biscuit wrappers and sleeping
children strewn throughout the gangway, trying to
attract customers certainly parched from the journey.
Out the window, buses impossibly laden with pots,
firewood, goats and people jostled for space in a
scene that could almost be mistaken for a biblical
exodus if it wasn’t for the rhythmical dhol beat
pulsating against all this chaos. After over 1000km,
we had reached Sehwan Sharif; resting place of Lal
Shahbaz Qalander.
17 Figure 8
Pilgrims smoke hashish atop the bus
PART THREE
SEHWAN, SINDH
The Sehwan Sharif mela occurs over three days in
Sehwan Sharif, just four hours’ drive north of Karachi
and is a death anniversary (or urs) for the Sufi
saint, Lal Shahbaz Qalander. Attracting pilgrims from
all over Pakistan each year to Qalander's final
resting place, the town of 30 000 inhabitants groans
each year with the swell of humanity that makes the
journey to pay their respects to the saint and seek
blessings from his shrine. But it is among this very
mass of humanity that the mela's seemingly paradoxical
existence in contemporary, increasingly conservative
Pakistan becomes self-evident.
From the whirling of Turkish dervishes to the worldfamous devotional songs of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the
pursuit of hāl underscores Sufi practices across the
globe and by any account, for the Qalandriya Sehwan
acts as a centre of that pursuit each year.
In the courtyard of Qalander’s shrine, the main
destination of pilgrim parties, a mass dhamāl was
already underway to signal the beginning of the mela.
18 Traditionally a north Indian folk dance, the dhamāl is
a critical element of Qalandriya practice in Pakistan,
through which practitioners aim to get closer to God
and experience ecstatic divine presence. Men, women,
third-genders and children all shake their heads,
throwing their arms to the dhol rhythm. Dancers
pitter-patter their feet and some pilgrims simply lie
on the ground shaking their heads to the beat. Mudho
declared:
‘Everyone is welcome here; there is no
discrimination of caste, race, and colour,
only those who love God.’
A female dancer’s elder stepped forward towards the
climax and untied the dancer’s headband, just as
Shafqat had explained. With this invitation the
kneeling young girl, hands on the warm marble, began
to slowly rotate her head. Each turn became faster and
more emphatic as the beat quickened. Soon her long,
black hair was being thrown through the air in a
frenzy, casting beads of sweat into the performance
circle. And then a final thud. Falling to one side,
the dancer lay collapsed on the floor, panting
heavily, the hair strewn over her face hiding empty,
half-open eyes.
Figure 9
Dhamāl dancer throws her hair
The motivation of the dancers, of course, varied from
pilgrim to pilgrim. Some saw Koranic symbolism in the
movements; the pitter-pattering of feet mimicking the
heat of the desert in which Hussein was killed at
19 Kerbala in 680 CE or hair-spinning as an appreciative
gesture of Fatima to clean the floor on which those
commemorators of her son’s death congregate. To be
sure, some dancers simply fancied a dance, others
earned a living from the performance and among them
many imitators could be found at Sehwan Sharif. But a
true dhamāl, delivering that still moment of enrapture
amidst the tumult motion and sound, is for a few the
very essence of hāl.
Figure 10 Female dhamāl dancers whirl their heads
The rhythm of the mela was relentless. All day long,
pilgrim parties departed in columns from their
makeshift bamboo and tarpaulin camps in Lāl Bāgh.
Parading through bazaars lined with trickling pyramids
of Afghan raisins and mulberries, as well as stacks of
thick, syrupy jalebis and halwa, they delivered their
respective neighborhood’s veil, containing blessings
and prayers, to Qalander’s tomb.
20 Figure 11 Pilgrims camp outside Sehwan town
Devotees flocked to circumambulate the inner shrine,
pushing their luck to get so close as to touch it
without being hauled back into the swell of people
charging forward barefoot on the muddied marble. Along
the perimeter of the shrine, pilgrims did their best
to escape this torrent of humanity and raise their
cupped palms to offer a prayer.
Precisely this sensory spectrum is the hallmark of
Sehwan Sharif. If it wasn’t the unrelenting dhol in
the background it was the group of matam attendees and
their choir. By the second day of the mela, already 53
people had died from the heat and lack of water. Yet
with the sun at its zenith, rows upon rows of barechested men stood to flagellate themselves for
Hussein’s martyrdom in the shrine’s courtyard.
21 Figure 12 Pilgrims self-flagellate at Sehwan
A tightly formed choir circle of singers stood either
side of the men. Beginning with little more than a
whisper, the choirs called out to the flagellants
alternately. Soon they were yelling from their
stomachs, throwing hands down to emphasise certain
lyrics then whipping them through the air to rally
their fellow devotees.
22 Figure 13 Choir sings in accompaniment to matam
The flagellants leant back and, looking to the sky,
raised one arm before beating it down onto their
bruised chests and raising the other. Some devotees
held
their
faces
in
their
hands,
sobbing
in
commemoration of Kerbala. The flagellant leader
screamed in between the beats. After a few minutes,
the men dropped both arms in exhaustion and moved a
few meters closer to the shrine before stopping and
lining up to do it all over again. And the same groups
of men would return the following day, too but this
time with knife-blades chained to a wooden handle.
23 Figure 14 Pilgrims self-flagellate at Sehwan
‘What is it about the mela?’ asked the Dr. Mehdi Reza
Shah, whose family has kept the shrine for almost
seven centuries. His question followed a long, tonguein-cheek conversation as to whether pilgrims nowadays
came out of cultural obligation or piety. Rhetorical
as it was, it struck at the heart of what Sehwan
Sharif offered to those who made the journey to be
here.
From the discomforts of even reaching the town, the
heat, the sweat, the thirst, the filth and crush of up
to a million bodies to the incessant drumming,
chanting, yelling, stomping, whirling, exhaustion,
beating and bleeding, the mela is a panoply of raw
violence. On paper the costs and benefits of
pilgrimage don't quite add up at first, yet in the
midst of the violence there was a peculiar presence of
something more that made it all worth it. Something in
the panting of the collapsed dhamāl dancer, something
in the vacant face of the flagellant that was calm and
fulfilled.
24 Figure 15 Pilgrim after completion of matam
Whether you call it hāl or not, it is in those final
moments of ecstatic release that it became clear that
what is at stake in Sehwan is not a chaotic violence
but a conscious pursuit of liberty, a freedom of
expression. The very liberty derivative of hāl that
Shafqat had explained 1000km away - in the catharsis
of Sayyi Yusuf’s lyrics, Mittu Sain’s drumming and
Badar Ali Khan’s singing - was strongly at work in
Sehwan.
Whereas
the
experience
of
hāl
itself
is
not
consciously felt, the decision by devotees to pursue
it in Sehwan appeared both conscious and intentional.
After the mela, a Shia friend contextualised this
decision and the events of festival more broadly;
‘You must understand, David, that what you
saw at Sehwan… this is not about a belief,
per se. This is about an experience, about
living through an emotion.’
Whatever violent threats the pilgrims face in their
everyday lives across Pakistan, the Sehwan Sharif mela
provided a sanctuary of tolerance and expression
rooted in the country's multi-ethnic and multi-faith
history that is rapidly disappearing from public
consciousness.
25 PART FOUR
KARACHI, SINDH
After three days of sensory bombardment, the roar of
the mela left Sehwan with a peculiar quiet. Gone were
the bristling buses and wafting smoke of campfires,
the cries for Ali and thundering footsteps of hopeful
devotees. Leftover red- and black-dyed bracelets and
empty glucose biscuit wrappers littered the streets
blown with breezes you could now hear. The blood still
stained the shrine floor but the pilgrims were all but
gone. In need of a place to collect my observations
and organise video footage, I travelled a few hours
south to Karachi where the sea air offered a wellneeded respite from the hanging heat of interior
Sindh.
Figure 16 Blood-stained floor of Qalander shrine
Lahore had provided me with a useful background and
somewhat theoretical basis with which to be introduced
to Sufi practices in Pakistan. Yet, just as Shafqat
had predicted, it was the experience of Sehwan that
the ‘on-the-ground’ reality of the pursuit of hāl –
whether in song, dance, prayer or pilgrimage – took on
a more tangible meaning.
26 The explanations of performative significance by Mittu
Sain, Badar Ali Khan and Shafqat Hussain made sense,
cognitively at least and corresponded to my estimation
of the significance of Sufi practices. That is to say,
that in ‘attacking the heart’, the highly affective
and violent practices of qawwāli and dhamāl are
integral components of a Sufi’s spiritual journey
towards divine unity by accessing one’s inner-self,
stripped of ego. Sufi instructional texts prescribe
practices of dhikr as the very means to achieve the
end-goal of divine unity and interpret Quranic verse
in such a way to legitimise this effort. One such
verse reads:
‘This
is
the
place
of
bewilderment
(hayra): He/not He. “You did not throw
when you threw, but God threw.”…Would that
I knew who is the middle, the one who
stands between the negations – His words
“You did not throw” – and the affirmation
– His words, “But He threw.” He is saying,
“You are not you when you are you, but God
is you.” This is the meaning of our words
concerning the Manifest and the loci of
manifestation and the fact that he is
identical with them, even though the forms
of the loci of manifestation are diverse.’
(William Chittick’s The Sufi Path of
Knowledge: Ibn al-Arabi’s Metaphysics of
Imagination [1989] p.114)
Without doctrinal context and belief, the above verse
lacks easy comprehension and Sufi writers such as Ibn
al-Arabi write clearly on the difference between
knowledge possessed (‘ilm) and knowledge understood
(ma’rifa). Yet for the purpose of this discussion, the
emboldened line enables a very simple but pertinent
question when one considers its centrality as a tenet
to Sufi belief on the path to hāl.
If the pursuit of hāl, the ecstatic moment of divine
unity when ‘you are not you when you are you, but God
is
you’
is
the
spiritual
end
goal
of
Sufi
practitioners, what do you do when you can’t be you?
That is to say, when your everyday beliefs and
practices are the target of sustained persecution as
they are in Pakistan?
It is this question that I began to wrestle with at
Sehwan, serving the departure point from which to
understand
Sufi
practices
in
Pakistan
in
a
fundamentally different manner than when I had left
the
UK.
Logically,
the
explanations
of
the
27 aforementioned interviewees in Lahore were sound but
experientially, the practices of devotees in Sehwan
were
much
more
nuanced
and
layered
in
their
significance.
As an atheist and socio-economically removed from
those I observed, I do not make the claim to share in
the lived experience of Qalandriya shia pilgrims
attending the mela. Nonetheless, political awareness
of the increasing religious conservatism and sectarian
violence
in
Pakistan,
especially
Sindh
and
Balochistan, coloured my conversations among devotees
to whom Sehwan was ‘not about a belief, per se…’ but
‘living through an emotion’.
Thus, as a centre of dhikr practices, Sehwan was a
locus in a cathartic pursuit of hāl that is as much a
function of growing political pressure as Sufi
scriptural instruction. The cyclic momentum of this
symbolism cannot be understated; Sufis seek salvation
from egotism in divine unity of hāl through dhikr but
are also persecuted for doing so, increasing its
symbolic and spiritual value and thus catalysing it
further.
Given Sufism’s aforementioned emphasis on ascetic
lifestyle, the importance of belief to the low socioeconomic class of pilgrims to Sehwan must also be
taken into consideration when attempting to understand
the drivers behind the cathartic pursuit of hāl. If
you haven’t material possessions, it is more likely
that
your
belief
system
will
be
of
greater
significance to you than someone who does.
In this way, the importance of dhikr and, in turn,
Sehwan
is
multi-faceted.
Prior
to
arriving
in
Pakistan,
I
suspected
its
significance
lay
in
scriptural
instruction
and
reward.
I
returned,
however, with a much more nuanced impression of the
socio-political dynamics closely tied into the pursuit
of hāl convergent at Sehwan.
28 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the
Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for the kind award of
a Travelling Fellowship, without which this journey
and its findings would not have been possible. I would
also like to extend particular thanks to Jamie Balfour
and Julia Weston, who were exceptionally understanding
and supportive throughout the lengthy logistical
prelude to my journey.
29 APPENDIX I: GLOSSARY
Balochistān
Province in S.W. Pakistan
Biryāni (Hind.)
Subcontinental rice dish
Deobandi (Hind.)
Subcontinental movement
within Sunni Islam
Dhamāl (Hind.)
N. Indian chorus dance form
Dhikr (Ar.)
Remembrance
Dhol (Hind.)
Type of N. Indian drum
Faqir (Ar.)
Sufi and/or poor person
Hāl (Ar.)
State of ecstasy
Halwa (Ar.)
Sweet popular in Islamic
world
Hujra (Ar.)
Guest room in Muslim
household
‘Ilm (Ar.)
Knowledge
Jalebi (Hind.)
Subcontinental deep-fried
sweet
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
Province in N.W. Pakistan
Lāl Shahbaz Qalander
Sufi saint of Qalandriya
following
Ma’rifa (Ar.)
State of understanding
knowledge
Mastī (Pers.)
Ecstasy/drunkenness
Matam (Ar.)
Self-flagellation practice
Mela (Hind.)
Festival/gathering
Muharram (Ar.)
Shia period of mourning
Mullāh (Ar.)
Muslim educated in
theology/law
Pandit (Hind.)
Hindu priest
Punjāb
Province in E. Pakistan
Qalandriya (Ar.)
Sufi following
Qawwāli (Hind.)
N. Indian chorus song form
Roti (Hind.)
Subcontinental flatbread
Rupee (Hind.)
Unit of currency
Shalwār kamīz (Hind.)
Subcontinental Muslim dress
Sindh
Province in S. Pakistan
Tabla (Hind.)
Type of N. Indian drum
Urs (Ar.)
Death anniversary of Islamic
saint
30