[Reader-list] Scam at South Asia's Most Popular Sufi Shrine

[Yogi Sikand]

Scam at South Asia's Most Popular Sufi Shrine


Yoginder Sikand



The shrine of the renowned twelfth century Chishti mystic Hazrat
Khwaja Moinduddin Chishti in Ajmer in Rajasthan is one of the most
renowned and revered Sufi dargahs in all of South Asia. Every year,
hundreds of thousands of pilgrims—Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs—visit the
shrine. Donations to the shrine from pilgrims run into several million
rupees annually. This precisely is the cause for a raging controversy
involving leading members of the Dargah Committee and a group of
Muslim social activists who have recently issued a report on the
alleged financial bungling and mismanagement at the shrine. The
seven-member group constituted an inquiry committee after the Ministry
of Minority Affairs received what the committee says were 'hundreds of
complaints' as well as a Public Interest Litigation filed by an NGO in
the Delhi High Court about financial misdoings at the shrine.



Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti is known for having led a simple and
austere life. He is said to have donated to the poor whatever he
received from people who came to visit him. For this he earned the
sobriquet Gharib Nawaz or 'helper of the poor'. This, the report says,
is in complete contrast to what several members of the committee
appointed to manage his shrine are today up to. As any visitor to the
shrine will attest, for many custodians of the shrine their work is
actually a flourishing business, pestering pilgrims for donations the
moment they step inside the precincts of the dargah.



  The inquiry committee report relates numerous instances of financial
mismanagement at the shrine. It refers to allegations against the
President of the Dargah Committee, Peerzada Shibli Qasim, who has been
accused of corruption relating to collection of donations in the name
of the shrine and of misusing the dargah's  guesthouse for his family.
He is also alleged of allowing a liquor shop to continue to function
in the premises of the Dargah Committee. Interestingly, four of his
colleagues in the Dargah Committee, Mansoor Ali Lalli, Shaukat Ali
Ansari, Abdul Wahid and Kadar Bhai Wadiwala, lodged a complaint last
year accusing him of having filed a writ petition in the Rajasthan
High Court without their consent against the Ministry of Minority
Affairs for allegedly not taking the permission of the Dargah
Committee for the appointment of the Nazim of manager. For that the
amount settled by the lawyer was Rs. 34,600, of which he is said to
have taken took Rs. 15,000/- in advance. The four members wanted that
this amount be recovered from Qasim. Qasim also claims that he has
been running a dargah school till, but he has not disclosed the exact
amount spent on this as per the Act 36 of the Dargah Act of 1955.



According to the report, Abdul Aleem, the deputy manager or Naib Nazim
of the Dargah Committee, is alleged to have consistently issued money
to various members of the Committee 'in a manner most unprofessional'
and 'without proper vouchers or stamped papers'. He claims to be
engaged in social work by running a computer centre, a school and a
langar or free community kitchen, but, the report says, he did not
divulge the budget for these activities. Allegations have also been
leveled against him of permitting the khuddam or traditional
custodians of the shrine to encroach on the dargah premises, including
in the main courtyard of the shrine.



Shaukat Ali Ansari, proprietor of a gun-manufacturing factory, is
another member of the Dargah Committee. The inquiry committee found
that he has been occupying a flat in the dargah for more than a year,
where he has arranged for the sons of his friend to stay, without
clearing the dues. The committee also found that 'he had no answer to
the heaps of pages written against his scams at the Waqf Board or
concerning the dargah' except denying these charges. Thus, for
instance, Babu Lal Singharia, ex-M.L.A. from Kekdi, claims that Ansari
had appropriated more some 1.7 lakh rupees. Jas Raj, President of the
Ajmer District Congress Committee and   former M.L.A., accused Ansari
of  having 'illegally grabbed the chairmanship of Rajasthan Waqf
Board' and 'frittering away the Waqf land, including many graveyards'.
  The report mentions Haji Qayyum Khan, former M.L.A., who has alleged
that Ansari 'has regularly been misappropriating Waqf Board funds'.
These include withdrawal of a fixed deposit of a whopping sum of
almost 20 lakh rupees, leasing Waqf property at the Imambara in Mount
Abu by taking fifteen lakh rupees as bribe and parting with two lakh
rupees for election purposes.  Haji Qayyum Khan has also leveled
charges against Ansari for the death of six persons. The President of
the All-India Jamaat-e Qureish, Fazl-e-Karim Qureshi, refers to
'umpteen cases of misappropriation of funds' while Ansari served as
Chairman of the Rajasthan Waqf Board between 1991 and 1998, including
having allegedly taken some 22 lakh rupees from workers for their
appointment.



The inquiry committee raises questions regarding Dargah Committee
member Abdul Kadir Wadiwala, who has been accused by Jas Raj, ex-MLA,
of misusing a sum of more than 1.75 lakh rupees and of not paying rent
for the guest house of the dargah for almost six years. The Muslim
Ekta Manch , a local civil society organization, has claimed that that
Wadiwala has collected several lakh rupees in the name of the dargah,
which he has invested in his own business.



The Inquiry Committee refers to 'bundles of papers of complaints'
against another member of the Dargah Committee, Mansoor Ali Lalli,
accusing him of gross manipulation of funds. For instance, he is said
to have spent more than fifty thousand rupees on food and tea on
himself and his family at the dargah's restaurant. He is also said to
have charged more than forty thousand rupees by way of traveling and
dearness allowance without submitting any vouchers and to have
collected money from donors for the decoration of the dargah but
failing to pay this into the dargah's account. Another charge is that
he has collected money from outside donors as well as a sum of almost
sixty thousand rupees from the Dargah Committee for organizing a
poetry recitation function or mushaira, although the Dargah Act of
1955 does not provide for allotment of money for this purpose.



Abdul Bari Chishti, another member of the Dargah Committee, has been
accused by the Inquiry Committee on account of collection of donations
in the name of the dargah and of misusing the shrine's guest for
personal purposes. He has been also alleged to have let out dargah
premises to people for less than the assessed market rate and of using
vehicles belonging to the shrine for his personal use.



The report alleges political interference in appointments to the
Dargah Committee. One such case relates to Mr. Wahid, Ajmer District
BJP President, a tenant of the dargah, who, while 'erratic and
irregular' in paying his rent, was allegedly able to become a member
of the Committee through the influence of a BJP Minister,
Satyanarayan Jatiya. Wahid has been accused of being involved in
changing the rentals of Dargah Committee properties and of occupying
some shops in the Dargah Committee complex but failing to regularly
pay rent.



Based on the evidence that it claims to have collected, the Inquiry
Committee concludes its report by asserting that the presence of
unscrupulous people in the Dargah Committee would 'jeopardise and
tarnish' the image of South Asia's most popular Sufi shrine. Similar
charges could be leveled against numerous other popular religious
establishments and pilgrimage centres across India, irrespective of
religious affiliation. The report 's damning indictment suggests the
need for greater involvement of public interest and civil society
groups in overseeing the running of such places, which, in the name of
serving religious causes, are also being used to promote the personal
interests of their custodians.