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The real naked `fakir'
The little-known shrine of a Sufi ascetic and poet whose life was a
revolt against traditions
Mayank Austen Soofi
Outside: a confusion of shoppers, beggars, biryani stalls and goats.
Inside: stillness.
Sandwiched between the imposing Jama Masjid and the chaotic Meena
Bazaar, the Sufi shrine of Hazrat Sarmad Shaheed in Old Delhi boasts
of no dome or marble. The cramped courtyard gets its homely character
from a giant neem tree and a Mughal-era well. The dargah is flanked by
Imran'schai (tea) shack, the Sonic CD store, Raza Bookshop, the
Qutubkhana Sarmadi stall that sells pamphlets, perfumes and amulets,
the one-room office of Al Makkah Tours & Travels, and Rahat Open
Surgery, an open-air clinic where a hakeem claims to cure diseases
like cancer and diabetes by bloodletting.
Although Sarmad's tiny tomb does not receive as many devotees and
visitors as Delhi's famed Sufi centres of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and
Khwaja Qutubuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, it is very special, and not just
because Sarmad was a mystic, a poet and - by birth - an Armenian Jew from
Persia.
Meena Bazaar
Sarmad was executed on the orders of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb - in 1660.
In 1910, a young Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who would go on to become
the great freedom fighter, wrote an essay on Sarmad - a piece of writing
in which many scholars trace the origins of Azad's religious thought
and political life. In 1950, an English translation of Sarmad's
Rubaiyat was published at Rabindranath Tagore's Santiniketan in West
Bengal. In 2001, a book by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai devoted an
entire chapter to Sarmad. That book was Same-Sex Love in India: A
Literary History.
In it, Kidwai wrote: `Sarmad was born a Jew in Kashan (in modern-day
Iran), around 1590. He became a trader and acquired knowledge of
mystic traditions and of Arabic and Persian poetry. Before he arrived
in the port city of Thatta (in modern-day Sindh) in 1632, he had
converted to Islam. In Thatta he met a Hindu boy named Abhai Chand.
The attraction was mutual and soon after meeting him, Sarmad abandoned
his trade and became a naked fakir.'
It is in this state that Sarmad appears on the cover of a slim
hard-bound volume sold at a stall outside his shrine. The
Hindi-language biography shows a skinny, unclothed man sitting against
the backdrop of Jama Masjid. Wearing a beatific smile, one of his arms
is raised, as if in defiance, towards the extravagantly dressed
Aurangzeb, who is scowling down at Sarmad. According to historians,
the infamously intolerant emperor hated this seemingly harmless
ascetic, who had eventually settled in Delhi, because of the latter's
nudity, his stubbornness in reciting only the first half of
Kalimah - the Muslim declaration of faith - and his proximity to the
original heir-apparent Dara Shikoh, Aurangzeb's elder brother, who was
eliminated by Aurangzeb during the struggle for succession.
A devotee at Sarmad's tomb
In his book The Peacock Throne: The Drama of Mogul India, American
historian Waldemar Hansen refers to Sarmad `as one of those profoundly
disturbing mystics whom only the East could produce and perhaps only
India could tolerate'. Describing his decapitation in front of Jama
Masjid, Hansen noted, `It would be a spectacular execution scene for
the Sufi martyr of Delhi: not strangling or beheading in a dark cell
but death in public, in the blaze of noon, as a warning to anyone who
dared to go against the state-cum-religion.'
Legend has it that Sarmad was reciting beautiful extempore verses as
the sword sliced off his head. The Sufi poet picked up his head,
walked up the mosque stairs, performed his final prayers and departed
to heaven.
The blood-red tiles of his shrine are a testimony to this bloody end.
Actually, the dargah is home to two Sufi saints: Sarmad Shaheed and
Hazrat Hare Bhare Shah, a contemporary of Aurangzeb's father Shah
Jahan. Hare Bhare Shah's tomb, indicative of his name, is made of
green tiles. The entire shrine is halved into these two colours - even
the doorway gets its colours from this scheme.
The quietude permeates every corner of the dargah. The noise of people
bargaining, singing, spitting, yelling and cursing on the street
stands in stark contrast to the soothing hum inside the shrine. The
three cobwebbed chandeliers cast a dim orange light on the red and
green carpets; daylight enters slyly through concrete jaalis (latticed
walls). A red side wall has Sarmad's Persian verses painted in
Devanagari. All day long, people stream in, in twos and threes. Some
write wishes on chits of papers and place them respectfully on
Sarmad's tomb; some offer roses, marigolds and sweetmeats; some sit
and pray silently; some cry softly without inhibition; a few even take
a nap.
"Sarmad had the distinction of being executed by the order of the
Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb"
There are both Muslims and Hindus among these pilgrims. During several
visits to the shrine, I have chatted with a number of devotees and
most had no clue about Sarmad's life except that he was a saint who
makes wishes come true. One evening, I met a sobbing Hindu woman
dressed for a wedding reception - she had stopped by to pray for her
son, who had gone into depression after being jilted by a girlfriend.
Sarmad's unconventional life is reflected in the lives of at least
some of the people residing in the vicinity. A few steps away is the
pavement home of several elderly hijras (eunuchs), headed by their
guru Munna. It's a makeshift shed but they have been living here for
years. Every morning, they read Urdu-language dailies over glasses of
creamy chai. Their home compensates for its lack of walls and doors
with a stately-looking bed, a wooden cupboard and a row of potted
plants. Unless they feel that you are there only to stare at them,
they let you join in their discussions, the subjects ranging from
pashmina shawls to the West Asian crisis to Sufi mystics. While most
of the hijras here have retired from active work, one of them runs a
chicken biryani stall near the Jama Masjid steps.
The cover of Sarmad's biography
On a recent cold morning at their lean-to, I met a visiting fakir from
south Delhi's Mehrauli. Looking charismatic in his ankle-length white
beard, the black-robed Bahar Ali Shah said: `It is not easy to
understand the life of a fakir. The devotion that existed between
Sarmad and Abhai Chand was not about the love you see around you; it
was the love between a father and son.'
In his classic Urdu essay Sarmad Shaheed, Azad, whose garden-tomb was
built within eye-shot distance of Sarmad's dargah, wrote: `Thatta was
Sarmad's Mount Sinai... it was a Hindu boy whose divine glance cast a
spell over Sarmad. That it happened, is no wonder! When a heart is
vulnerable to love, the darner's needle acts as efficaciously as the
executioner's axe in slicing it down the middle... It seems that the
simple Iranian trader, with an intensely lonely heart, was desperately
looking for a buyer. When he felt the thrill of discovering one, he
did not bother to find out who he was and what he offered in exchange.
That a precious commodity (his heart) was desired by a pair of magical
eyes, was enough reason for celebration. The deal was clinched.'
On the day of Sarmad's death, the naked Sufi was made to walk from the
Red Fort to Jama Masjid. Guarded by armed soldiers, he was surrounded
by hundreds of spectators. Hansen wrote, `... somewhere in that sea of
faces was Abhai Chand, Sarmad's beloved Hindu boy, the catalyst of his
rapture, sainthood, and doom.'
http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/N7FBbGjeLotufVA8sLjyUM/Delhis-Belly--The-real-naked-fakir.html
From: A. Papazian
The little-known shrine of a Sufi ascetic and poet whose life was a
revolt against traditions
Mayank Austen Soofi
Outside: a confusion of shoppers, beggars, biryani stalls and goats.
Inside: stillness.
Sandwiched between the imposing Jama Masjid and the chaotic Meena
Bazaar, the Sufi shrine of Hazrat Sarmad Shaheed in Old Delhi boasts
of no dome or marble. The cramped courtyard gets its homely character
from a giant neem tree and a Mughal-era well. The dargah is flanked by
Imran'schai (tea) shack, the Sonic CD store, Raza Bookshop, the
Qutubkhana Sarmadi stall that sells pamphlets, perfumes and amulets,
the one-room office of Al Makkah Tours & Travels, and Rahat Open
Surgery, an open-air clinic where a hakeem claims to cure diseases
like cancer and diabetes by bloodletting.
Although Sarmad's tiny tomb does not receive as many devotees and
visitors as Delhi's famed Sufi centres of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and
Khwaja Qutubuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, it is very special, and not just
because Sarmad was a mystic, a poet and - by birth - an Armenian Jew from
Persia.
Meena Bazaar
Sarmad was executed on the orders of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb - in 1660.
In 1910, a young Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who would go on to become
the great freedom fighter, wrote an essay on Sarmad - a piece of writing
in which many scholars trace the origins of Azad's religious thought
and political life. In 1950, an English translation of Sarmad's
Rubaiyat was published at Rabindranath Tagore's Santiniketan in West
Bengal. In 2001, a book by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai devoted an
entire chapter to Sarmad. That book was Same-Sex Love in India: A
Literary History.
In it, Kidwai wrote: `Sarmad was born a Jew in Kashan (in modern-day
Iran), around 1590. He became a trader and acquired knowledge of
mystic traditions and of Arabic and Persian poetry. Before he arrived
in the port city of Thatta (in modern-day Sindh) in 1632, he had
converted to Islam. In Thatta he met a Hindu boy named Abhai Chand.
The attraction was mutual and soon after meeting him, Sarmad abandoned
his trade and became a naked fakir.'
It is in this state that Sarmad appears on the cover of a slim
hard-bound volume sold at a stall outside his shrine. The
Hindi-language biography shows a skinny, unclothed man sitting against
the backdrop of Jama Masjid. Wearing a beatific smile, one of his arms
is raised, as if in defiance, towards the extravagantly dressed
Aurangzeb, who is scowling down at Sarmad. According to historians,
the infamously intolerant emperor hated this seemingly harmless
ascetic, who had eventually settled in Delhi, because of the latter's
nudity, his stubbornness in reciting only the first half of
Kalimah - the Muslim declaration of faith - and his proximity to the
original heir-apparent Dara Shikoh, Aurangzeb's elder brother, who was
eliminated by Aurangzeb during the struggle for succession.
A devotee at Sarmad's tomb
In his book The Peacock Throne: The Drama of Mogul India, American
historian Waldemar Hansen refers to Sarmad `as one of those profoundly
disturbing mystics whom only the East could produce and perhaps only
India could tolerate'. Describing his decapitation in front of Jama
Masjid, Hansen noted, `It would be a spectacular execution scene for
the Sufi martyr of Delhi: not strangling or beheading in a dark cell
but death in public, in the blaze of noon, as a warning to anyone who
dared to go against the state-cum-religion.'
Legend has it that Sarmad was reciting beautiful extempore verses as
the sword sliced off his head. The Sufi poet picked up his head,
walked up the mosque stairs, performed his final prayers and departed
to heaven.
The blood-red tiles of his shrine are a testimony to this bloody end.
Actually, the dargah is home to two Sufi saints: Sarmad Shaheed and
Hazrat Hare Bhare Shah, a contemporary of Aurangzeb's father Shah
Jahan. Hare Bhare Shah's tomb, indicative of his name, is made of
green tiles. The entire shrine is halved into these two colours - even
the doorway gets its colours from this scheme.
The quietude permeates every corner of the dargah. The noise of people
bargaining, singing, spitting, yelling and cursing on the street
stands in stark contrast to the soothing hum inside the shrine. The
three cobwebbed chandeliers cast a dim orange light on the red and
green carpets; daylight enters slyly through concrete jaalis (latticed
walls). A red side wall has Sarmad's Persian verses painted in
Devanagari. All day long, people stream in, in twos and threes. Some
write wishes on chits of papers and place them respectfully on
Sarmad's tomb; some offer roses, marigolds and sweetmeats; some sit
and pray silently; some cry softly without inhibition; a few even take
a nap.
"Sarmad had the distinction of being executed by the order of the
Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb"
There are both Muslims and Hindus among these pilgrims. During several
visits to the shrine, I have chatted with a number of devotees and
most had no clue about Sarmad's life except that he was a saint who
makes wishes come true. One evening, I met a sobbing Hindu woman
dressed for a wedding reception - she had stopped by to pray for her
son, who had gone into depression after being jilted by a girlfriend.
Sarmad's unconventional life is reflected in the lives of at least
some of the people residing in the vicinity. A few steps away is the
pavement home of several elderly hijras (eunuchs), headed by their
guru Munna. It's a makeshift shed but they have been living here for
years. Every morning, they read Urdu-language dailies over glasses of
creamy chai. Their home compensates for its lack of walls and doors
with a stately-looking bed, a wooden cupboard and a row of potted
plants. Unless they feel that you are there only to stare at them,
they let you join in their discussions, the subjects ranging from
pashmina shawls to the West Asian crisis to Sufi mystics. While most
of the hijras here have retired from active work, one of them runs a
chicken biryani stall near the Jama Masjid steps.
The cover of Sarmad's biography
On a recent cold morning at their lean-to, I met a visiting fakir from
south Delhi's Mehrauli. Looking charismatic in his ankle-length white
beard, the black-robed Bahar Ali Shah said: `It is not easy to
understand the life of a fakir. The devotion that existed between
Sarmad and Abhai Chand was not about the love you see around you; it
was the love between a father and son.'
In his classic Urdu essay Sarmad Shaheed, Azad, whose garden-tomb was
built within eye-shot distance of Sarmad's dargah, wrote: `Thatta was
Sarmad's Mount Sinai... it was a Hindu boy whose divine glance cast a
spell over Sarmad. That it happened, is no wonder! When a heart is
vulnerable to love, the darner's needle acts as efficaciously as the
executioner's axe in slicing it down the middle... It seems that the
simple Iranian trader, with an intensely lonely heart, was desperately
looking for a buyer. When he felt the thrill of discovering one, he
did not bother to find out who he was and what he offered in exchange.
That a precious commodity (his heart) was desired by a pair of magical
eyes, was enough reason for celebration. The deal was clinched.'
On the day of Sarmad's death, the naked Sufi was made to walk from the
Red Fort to Jama Masjid. Guarded by armed soldiers, he was surrounded
by hundreds of spectators. Hansen wrote, `... somewhere in that sea of
faces was Abhai Chand, Sarmad's beloved Hindu boy, the catalyst of his
rapture, sainthood, and doom.'
http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/N7FBbGjeLotufVA8sLjyUM/Delhis-Belly--The-real-naked-fakir.html
From: A. Papazian