What is perceived sacred by the people or handed down from generation to generation as sacred with its evolved aura of awe creates an ambiance that has the power to numb and thus deceive critical mind. Critical mind is a questioning mind and it becomes threateningly challenging for a society that is ruled by dead and deadly traditions practiced as inviolable norms. Sifting through the sacred debris in order to separate the dead from the living is a taboo. Consequently no effort is made to distinguish the pro status quo Sufis from the anti-status quo ones. The former, much larger in number, are venerated more than the latter for being compatible with the needs of organized religion which makes them innocuous for the ruling elite and palatable for the people that have been conditioned to wallow in the still waters of stodgy superstitions.

Pro status quo Sufis invariably appear conservative in their outlook if you scratch the veneer of their notional utterances and concrete lives. They tend at best to occupy middle ground; they accept relatively tolerant version of faith while critiquing the clergy’s stringent interpretation of religion with unmistakable puritanical streak that insists on living the past as present and imagining the future as the sum total of the past and present. Sufis falling in this category imperceptibly tried to have the best of both the world. They had vast chunks of fertile lands, wealth and political power as was the case with Bahauddin Zakariya Multani. Sultan Bahu was a landed aristocrat who benefited from his vast estate. Khawaja Ghulam Farid was the Pir [spiritual guide] of the ruler of princely state of Bahawalpur. He was highly respected at the ruler’s court which added immensely to his clout as a social being and helped popularize him as a holy man that ended up having a large following by the rich that militated against the practice of venerated patriarchs of Chishti Order such as Baba Farid [who he was named after] and Nizamuddin Aulia. Baba Farid migrated from royal infested Delhi to Ajodhan [present day Pakpattan] to keep his distance from the court and rulers. ‘Shaikh Nizamuddin Aulia’s respone to [King] Alauddin Khiliji’s repeated request for an audience is well-known: “My house has two doors, If the Sultan enters by one, I will make my exit by the other,” writes Zahra Sabri in her well-researched article ‘Why Sufism is not what it is made out to be’ which was published in the April 2018 issue of the Herald.

The story of Pir Meher Ali Shah reflects his relationship with the power centres of his times. His shrine is routinely frequented by civil and military bureaucracy in Islamabad for worldly blessings.

So we have mystics who enjoyed all the material comforts of life, benefited from their relations with the rulers while their supposedly spiritual power gifted them popular following which further cemented their influential position among toffs and snobs. This tradition of wielding power in the guise of spiritualism has further been strengthened by Sajjada Nashins, the heirs to such mystics by being the recipients of largess bestowed upon them by successive rulers. The descendants in return continue to stress the legitimacy of the powers that be by making their followers acquiesce to dictates of the iniquitous power structures based on class distinctions and socioeconomic hierarchy. Conformity and total submission demanded from the disciples in seemingly spiritual matters at the Khanqah and seminary instill in them respect for what is made out to be divine authority. Such an orientation and training of disciples and followers prepare them to genuflect before authorities in secular life. In other words, the mundane strengthens the spiritual and the spiritual reinforces the mundane. The mundane in fact is thinly concealed functional spirituality and the spiritual is veiled functional mundanity. There is little reflection of genuine spirituality in the worldly lives of those who are heirs to the pro status Sufis as they are cozily ensconced in the echelons of power. It’s no surprise to see Bahauddin Zakariya’s descendants doing power politics but one is miffed to see the heirs to the legacy of dispossessed saint Baba Farid as landed aristocrats.

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Whether such degeneration is a later development as a result of intervention by extraneous factors or embedded in the philosophic vision and practice of the saint needs further probing. Interestingly what seems to have saved Shah Hussain and Bulleh Shah from being appropriated by the forces of status quo to a large extent is not only their worldviews but also their lifestyles. Both refused to have settled family life and loved celibacy. They left no one to succeed them which meant there was no one legitimately entitled to ‘sell’ them to the powerful bidders.