Seventy-seven years have passed since Gandhi was martyred in the inferno of India’s Partition. Pakistan had separated as a Muslim nation. In these months, Gandhi fought his life’s most agonised but morally significant battle, one that illuminated the way for his people as they set about building a free nation. This was his struggle to affirm that Muslim residents belonged equally and held equal rights in newly independent India. There was rage and anguish among the refugees teeming the capital who had been forever expelled from their homelands in what was now Pakistan. In their ranks were also large numbers of my own extended family.
Hazrat Muin-ud-Din from a Guler painting showing an imaginary meeting of Sufi saints. Photo: Wikimedia commons
The Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had for decades battled not the British colonial masters for an India in which Muslims and Christians would only be allowed second class citizenship. As Gandhiji walked for his daily interfaith prayer meeting on the winter evening of January 30, 1948, a young man steeped in this ideology came forward. He touched Gandhi’s feet, then rose erect and pumped bullets into the Mahatma’s chest.
Why, 77 years later, did a group of us gather on Gandhi’s martyrdom day in Ajmer for an interfaith march to the iconic Moinuddin Chishti, a 13th-century Sufi saint and philosopher, also known as the Ajmer Dargah Shareef?
Behind this are three stories. These stories stretch across many centuries. The first relates the epic story of the establishment of this 13th century Sufi shrine, and its phenomenal growth over the centuries, as an exemplar of the unity of all faiths.
The second is the story of Gandhi’s last and life’s most momentous fast, in January 1948, barely two weeks before his assassination.
And third is the 21st-century claim, admitted in a local court, that the Ajmer Sharif Dargah, the mausoleum of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, was built over a pre-existing Hindu (Shiva) temple that was demolished, and that the temple should be restored at the site.
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For the first story, we go back to the year 1141, when in Iran’s Sijistan a young boy named Moinuddin was born. Orphaned at the age of 14, a chance encounter with a wandering mystic launched him on a spiritual quest for what lay beyond loneliness, death and destruction.
Historian Mehru Jaffer in The Book of Muinuddin Chishti describes how by the age of 20, he had studied theology, grammar, philosophy, ethics, and religion in the learned seminaries of Bukhara and Samarkand. During his wide travels, he met Khwaja Usman Harooni, a Sufi master of the Chishti order who he adopted as his mentor and spiritual teacher. Harooni initiated Moinuddin into the Chishti silsila (or Sufi lineage). Moinuddin Chishti then travelled to Multan, where he studied Sanskrit and Hindu texts. He journeyed to Lahore, Delhi and ended his travels in Ajmer in 1191. On the throne of Delhi sat emperor Sultan Iltutmish.
It was in Ajmer that Moinuddin met his wife Bibi Ummatullah, and with her he built a humble mud house. Jaffer describes how this home soon became a sanctuary for the homeless and the hungry, and for restless anguished souls in search of solace and peace. His extraordinary generosity and acts of selflessness became legendary, earning him the title of Gharib Nawaz, or friend of the poor, an honorific that stays with him to this day. His renown spread as a charismatic and compassionate spiritual preacher and teacher whose spiritual discourses attracted people from far and wide, of both Muslim and Hindu faiths. He preached the unity of all faiths and the love of the divine.
Akbar visits the tomb of Khwajah Mu’in ad-Din Chishti at Ajmer. Photo: Wikimedia commons
After his passing in March 1236, Moinuddin came to be widely venerated as a great saint. Sultan Iltutmish visited his humble tomb to honour his memory. Other kings and emperors followed and slowly expanded the infrastructure of the complex. It was emperor Akbar who was especially drawn to this shrine, visiting it 14 times during his reign.
In 1566, he trudged to it barefoot, with his Hindu consort Maraim-uz-Zamani, in a pilgrimage seeking sons to be born to them. He constructed the sanctum sanctorum of the tomb. The shrine was extended further by later emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan, queen Jahanara, and Mughal princes and rulers who came after them. Kumar Rao Scindia, who believed the Khwaja had blessed him with a son, Maharani Baiza Bai Scindia, Maharaja Ajit Singh of Jodhpur and the Maharaja of Baroda were among a legion of Hindu rulers who also added to the shrine complex.
Akbar is also famed for donating in 1568, the largest degh or cauldron in the world to the dargah, with a diameter of 6 metres, made of an alloy of seven metals, in which the rim of the degh never heats up even while fires are lit at the base to cook food for the massive langar, even to this day.
Far now into the 21st century, this dargah remains one of the most popular shrines in South Asia, revered by tens of thousands of devotees – Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Parsi, Buddhist and Jain – from India and around the world.
At least 20,000 worshippers offer prayers here everyday, of which about a third are not Muslim. They offer rose petals, some seven tonnes a day, sourced mainly from Pushkar Temple to the Hindu god of creation Lord Brahma. They offer the traditional chadar, tie the traditional red and saffron strings with their prayers seeking a boon, and partake of the langar still cooked in the degh donated by Akbar and his son Jehangir.
It was here that a group of us gathered on January 30, 2025 for inter-faith prayers and a march past Hindu, Christian and Sikh temples, culminating at the famed Ajmer Dargah. In the ranks of those of us who gathered at Ajmer many were not even people of religious faith. I am a secular agnostic, respectful of religious faith among others but deriving my own ethics independently of any specific religious prescription.
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For the second story of this tale, we leap eight centuries forward, after the passing of Khwaja Gareeb Nawaz Moinuddin Chisthi. This was January 1948, in the national capital of the newly independent India. Gandhi began his last fast a fortnight before he was assassinated.
They were turbulent early days of this fragile but bitterly riven free India. The capital city was teeming with thousands of refugees uprooted by brutal violence from their homelands. Slaughter persisted on both sides of the new border, and an uncounted number of women were abducted and raped. The refugees were resentful, angry and uncertain about their future.
Much of their wrath was directed at the Muslim residents of the city, whom they wrongly held responsible for the crimes of their co-religionists on the other side of the border. There was violence everywhere against Muslim lives and properties across the seething city. Refugee camps were filling with Muslims who felt they were left with no option except to migrate to Pakistan. Gandhi, Maulana Azad and Nehru tirelessly pleaded with the Muslims to stay in India, a country they pledged would continue to belong equally to them as to its Hindu majority.
Mahatma Gandhi having a meal before beginning his last fast. Photo: Public domain
It was in the midst of this smouldering mass rage and violence that Gandhi decided to begin his last fast. There are accounts that even Nehru, Patel and Azad cautioned Gandhi against it. “There is just too much public anger,” they said. “This is not the time.” Gandhiji’s gentle but firm response was, “This is the time.”
Germane to our story today is Gandhi’s second demand in his last fast. One central prong of retributive violence of the refugees, spurred by Hindutva organisations like the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, was to plant Hindu idols in Muslim shrines and dargahs, like the Connaught Place Masjid and the historic Mehrauli Dargah. Gandhi’s second demand was that we restore with full respect all Muslim shrines to our Muslim sisters and brothers. No true place of worship of any faith, Gandhi explained, can be founded on disrespect, humiliation and violence against any other faith.
Historian Irfan Habib was 19 years old at the time and describes, as an eyewitness, how much this last struggle by Gandhi brought solace and hope to people of Muslim identity like him during the Partition. On the first day of his fast, 10,000 people marched on the streets of Delhi in support of his demands. By the fifth day, the numbers swelled to 1,00,000. All his demands were accepted. Our Muslim sisters and brothers were given back their places of worship, with a guarantee that they would be free to worship in their chosen ways in free India.
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Our third story brings us to present times. A law passed by the Indian parliament in 1991 buoyed the historic guarantee after Gandhi’s last fast, by prescribing that the status of no place of worship, as it stood in 1947, could be altered. But the Chief Justice of India’s highest court observed with puzzling reasoning that the law did not bar surveys and studies into what the religious character of these structures was going back even centuries. Hindutva organisations, on cue, began to raise claims that Hindu temples lay below an array of historic mosques and dargahs across the country. This spurred frightening prospects of the tearing apart of the country one more time.
Even among this multitude of claims of temples under mosques, one that particularly shook the public conscience was the claim that under the Moinuddin Chishti Dargah in Ajmer lay first a Jain and then a Shiv Temple.
Haji Syed Salman Chishty, a Khadim or Dargah caretaker spoke for so many Indians in an anguished article he wrote for the Financial Times. “Ajmer Dargah Sharif, the resting place of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishty”, he wrote, “is not only a sacred site but a symbol of India’s rich tradition of interfaith harmony. For centuries, (this)… revered and sacred spiritual centre has brought together people from all walks of life, irrespective of religion, caste, or creed… Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains and devotees, alongside Muslims and people of all faiths, have visited this shrine for centuries, seeking blessings and spiritual solace.”
“Ajmer Sharif”, he rightly observes, “has always been a symbol of India’s pluralistic heritage. Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti preached a message of love, inclusivity, and service to humanity. His teachings brought together people of different backgrounds, making Ajmer Sharif a centre of spiritual solace. Historical records, writings of the past eight centuries and the oral traditions of millions of devotees stand as sacred testament to Ajmer Dargah Sharif’s Chishty Sufi spiritual foundations and its unifying role.”
“Through acts of service, humility, and love, Sufi teachings have played a pivotal role in fostering harmony in India’s diverse society. Ajmer Dargah Sharif is a living example of these principles, serving as a sanctuary of peace and mutual respect.” “Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chishty”, he recalls, “dedicated his life to serving humanity and spreading the message of love, compassion, and unity…These values are more relevant than ever in today’s world, where divisive forces seek to exploit historical inaccuracies for personal and political gain…The Dargah Sharif has always been a space where differences dissolve, and a shared humanity takes precedence.”
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In September 2017, when a frightening battery of lynchings began sweeping India, a group of us decided to set out on a series of journeys of the Karwan e Mohabbat or Caravan of Love, reaching the homes of every family that had lost loved ones to lynching and violence, offering solidarity, atonement and care.
We first went to Assam and crossed over a month later to Porbandar, a coastal town on the Arabian Sea where Gandhi was born. We felt it was fitting that half-way through this journey, the Karwan should halt at the Ajmer Sharif Dargah. The Khadims of the dargah welcomed us with the honours they offer to visiting heads of government because they said our message of love and harmony so closely echoed the teachings of Khwaja Gharib Nawaz.
I thought the time had come for us to return to the dargah once more. I reached out to my dear comrade Kavita Shrivastava, National President of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties. She told me that a wonderful group of writers, journalists and educationists had come together three years earlier in Ajmer under the banner of the Gandhi Mohotsav Samiti. Troubled by rising religious hate among young people, they resolved to spread Gandhi’s teachings in schools and colleges. They would be perfect partners, I agreed, for our collective enterprise for harmony.
Sadbhavna yatra in Ajmer. Photo: Author provided
And so, I found myself in Ajmer on the morning of January 30, 2025. The sunshine was soft, the air crisp. Among those who had travelled from outside Ajmer were Aruna Roy, Kavita, Nikhil Dey, Shankar Singh and journalist Mandeep Punia. More importantly, there were 600 children from ten private schools, 25 law school interns, and over 700 Ajmer citizens from all walks of life.
Before the march started, prayers were recited by priests and nuns of diverse faiths – Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist and Jain. Our march began after two minutes of silent tribute to Gandhiji. Our first halt was at Robert Memorial Church, established in 1863 at the Ajmer Gate. Here a group of priests and nuns led by Father Ashish George showered flowers at the marchers. Next came the Sikh Gurudwara at Ganj. Priests and worshippers offered us flowers. The same recurred outside the Hindu temples of Bateshwar Maharaj and the Shani Mandir at Delhi Gate.
Shopkeepers showering flowers at those marching in the sadbhavna yatra. Photo: Author provided.
The most uplifting part of this four-kilometre journey was the last one-kilometre stretch as we approached the Ajmer Sharif Dargah. Ordinary citizens lined up outside their shops spontaneously, each with their bags of flowers. They rained these flowers on us. From the names of the shops outside which they stood, I could estimate that the majority of them were Hindus.
At the entrance of the Ajmer Sharif Dargah, we were warmly welcomed by the Khadims, dressed in their formal finery. They tied turbans to the men and offered shawls to the women. They then led us into the sanctorum. Here, a Khadim tied the traditional red and saffron thread around my right wrist and asked me to seek a boon. My agnostic heart did not resist. I did as he instructed.
Sadbhavna yatra in Ajmer. Photo: Author provided
Weeks later, as I write this account, the red and saffron thread still hangs on my wrist. I look at it sometimes and wistful thoughts gather in my heart – thoughts I would not permit in normal times.
I allow myself to imagine that somewhere in the universe, Khwaja Gharib Nawaz Moinuddin Chisthi and Mahatma Gandhi would be looking down with love and compassion at our troubled land, and with them would be the likes of Gautama Buddha, Kabir and Nanak. I feel a sense of solace, an assurance that these times of hate will pass, that the boon that I sought inside the Ajmer Sharif Dargah will be realised. The boon I sought was that we will in the end claim the country that we had promised ourselves, a land that is ineffable in its kindness, equality and justice.
I am grateful to Mandeep Punia for the visuals, to Syed Rubeel Haider Zaidi for his research support and Imaad ul Hasan for editing the pictures.
Harsh Mander is a social worker and writer.
