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Monks' Dilemma
compassion for the poor. The Dargah is his burial place over which a magnificent mosque has been built with liberal contribution from ordinary devotees to small rulers, kings and emperors.
Monks' Dilemma
| 155 Shree, "There are instances of people, dying on the way, while coming here, in accidents. If incidentally some escape injury or death then they proclaim that the Khwaja has saved them. The question is that all were coming to pay obeisance then why only some were saved and not others? The injury or death or escape can be explained on the basis of impact on the person of the resultant force of numerous forces emanating as a result of accident, applying the principles of Dynamics."
Khadim, "You better ask the people as to why they come here and ask for boons."
Shree, "It is your duty also to tell people about the fundamental tenets of Islam."
The Khadim pretended that he had some very important work and went away.
The narrow road leading to the Dargah was overcrowded by visitors and vendors selling flowers, chadars (a bed sheet size piece of cloth) in various hues and colours, of ordinary to muslin fabric, embroidered or ordinary and costing from a few hundreds to thousands. The vendors, the guides and the Khadims (the hierarchical partners in the offerings to the Khwaja) and their agents competed with each other to grab as many as possible the richest of devotees, jostled and harassed the visitors. The small enclosure around the tomb was small and crowded by attendant Khadims who were putting chadar over the visitors and demanding cash donations. The visitors by and large throng to the Dargah to ask boons for successes and cures under the pervading superstitious belief of all strata of society, rich and poor, illiterate and learned that they would get their wishes fulfilled by the grace and benevolence of the Khwaja without effort and matching action (karma).
Shree met the head Khadim and asked, "Islam ordains good action (karma) in accordance with the dictates of the almighty god and as revealed to the prophet and does not allow obeisance to any other than the god, even to the prophet, then why this practice of obeisance to the Khwaja is allowed here?"
Khadim, "People get their wishes fulfilled here and therefore pay obeisance to the Khwaja and prey for granting boons to them."
Deepti had cherished a strong desire since long to visit Hardwar. Standing with Deepak at Harkipauri she watched with interest the odd activities of the pilgrims, some taking bath, reciting songs of praise and begging boons from the river Ganges, others throwing last mortal remains of bones of the dead with their family priests reciting hymns which they could not decipher and many other tourists, enjoying the funny rituals. Deepti went to a pilgrim who had taken bath and was waiting for his companion and enquired, "Do you not feel that the water here in which you were bathing and gulping also with both hands repeatedly, is polluted and may harm you? It has been analysed in reputed government laboratories and found unfit even for bathing much less for drinking."
