The last stand falls?

Amar Guriro:

The shrines of Sindh, hitherto untouched by the terrorists, have started going the way of their counterparts in the rest of the country

It was a dreamy evening. After sunset, the sky became gloomy over the village. Herds of goats and cows started returning back to the village from pastures, unsettling the dirt on the track, which, mixed with smoke coming from the village houses, made a thick brown haze in the air above Marri village in Shikarpur district of northern Sindh province.

Inside the village, an old style building with a colorful domed room, one that can be seen from far away, looked very peaceful. Around a century-and-a-half old, this building is the Dargah (shrine) of a Sufi saint, Ghulam Shah Gazi. In the courtyard of the building, the spiritual leader and Gaddi Nasheen (living descendant of the saint buried) Pir Syed Hajjan Shah, a bearded man wearing a turban, was sitting on a raised platform. A group of around three dozen devotees were sitting around him with crossed legs.

All of a sudden, the shrine of this most powerful saint among his followers was jolted with an explosion. The explosion killed three devotees on the spot and 18 others were injured, including the shrine’s Gaddi Nasheen Pir Syed Hajjan Shah. Almost everyone in the village and nearby villages rushed to the site. Some of the injured were taken to Civil Hospital, Shikarpur and others, including the seriously injured Shah, were taken to Sukkur.

Next morning, Pir Hajjan Shah was taken to Karachi, where he died in a private hospital after five days. A number of cities in the Sukkur, Larkana and Hyderabad divisions observed shutter-down strikes and angry devotees of the shrine and supporters held protests and blocked roads. Although Dargah Ghulam Shah Gazi of Shikarpur was the shrine of a Sufi saint, it basically belonged to Shia Muslim sect, even though many of its devotees or followers were Sunni Muslims and even Hindus.

Although shrines in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Northern Areas and Punjab have frequently been targeted in the last one decade, but in Sindh, except its capital city of Karachi, the shrines remained safe from such incidents. The blast at the Shikarpur shrine was not the first of its type to target any Sufi saint’s followers. Just four days before the incident, a blast had taken place during a rally being attended by Syed Ghulam Hussain Shah Bukhari, Pir of another Sufi saint shrine of Qambar Sharif in Jacobabad, during which the Pir was injured seriously and his grandson, Shafiq Hussain Shah, was killed.

The Shikarpur police claimed that there were foreign hands behind Hajjan Shah Shrine blast, possibly with the help of some local Sunni extremist elements. “We have reached the conclusion that there are foreign hands behind this blast … we are scanning suspects and so far we have investigated more than a hundred persons who belong to Sipah-e-Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and other banned religious extremists groups and we will soon reach the real culprits,” said Parvez Chandio, Senior Superintendent Police (SSP) Shikarpur district.

Sindh, with its large number of Sufi shrines, has always remained a peaceful land with religious tolerance between different religions and sects. The majority of Sindhi people enjoy coexistence with people of other beliefs as they share a common culture and language. The unnoticed mushrooming of Madrassas which were constructed during the last one decade, have shaken the peaceful people of Sindh.

“No one else, but the religious extremists are behind such incidents or I would say clearly that Sunni extremist groups are responsible for Marri Shrine blast,” said International Red Crescent Society Shikarpur district Secretary General and executive director Insaaf Social Welfare Association Shikarpur, Muhammad Paryal Mari.  Independent sources claim that more than two dozen Madrassas constructed in the district in the last seven years.

Pir Syed Sarwar Ali Shah, elder son of the deceased and new custodian of the shrine said that he was still unable to understand why someone will kill his father. “We are spiritual people and we never ever hurt anybody. We always spread love and asked our devotees to think for the betterment of humanity and we have no any enmity with anyone, we are in a shock over why it happened, we are unable to understand the reasons behind such incident,” said Shah.

Abdul Razzak Birhoi, a journalist of Lakhi town of Shikarpur district, attached with Sindhi television channel KTN-News and leading Sindhi language newspaper Daily Kawish, who has thoroughly covered the incident, doesn’t attribute the incident to the Shia-Sunny clash. “It was a bigger conspiracy planned by those who want to postpone the  general elections and want to spark religious clashes in Sindh. The Marri village shrine is very important for hundreds of its devotees, not only in Shikarpur but also in several cities of Balochistan,” said Birhoi.

After the incident, Lakhi police arrested two members of Sipah-e-Sahaba, Lakhi town. “The entire city knows them and that they can’t do such a high level crime. The police is just trying to divert attention,” said Birhoi, adding that the Sindh chief minister took notice and directed the police to investigate the case properly in six days, so police arrested innocent people only to justify their own position.

In 2010, after the blasts at Lahore’s Data Darbar and Karachi’s Abdullah Shah Ghazi Darbar, the Sindh government decided to provide certain security measures to all these shrines, but they were not implemented. Though the trend to target shrines has started in Sindh but the provincial government has made no proper security arrangements for these shrines.

The shrines in Sindh lack security guards, CCTV cameras, walkthrough gates, metal detectors or other security measures. According to official data of Sindh Auqaf, the official custodian in charge of looking after these shrines and making required arrangements, there are 78 major shrines of saints in 23 districts of Sindh. These Sufi shrines have a national level importance and people not just from across Sindh but also from other provinces and countries visit these shrines regularly.

The Sindh Auqaf Department data reveals that there are 756 employees, including curators, watchmen, cooks, Khadims (helpers) and accountants, who look after, serve and guard these 78 shrines, which means an average of 10 people working at each shrine. There are, however, no security guards. When contacted, former minister Auqaf Abdul Haseeb Khan said that the department did not have sufficient funds to provide all these security arrangements.

However, sources in the department state that annually, the cash, gold jewelry and other valuables, which devotees offer to show their love for saint on the single shrine of Qalandar, is much higher than total budget of the department. Being the custodian, the department takes all these cash and other valuables.

The writer is a journalist based in Karachi.