Sacred Silence

While there are protests happening across many Indian cities after Parliament passed the controversial Waqf Bill, Kashmiris have chosen to stay silent, once again

- Toibah Kirmani IS A SUB-EDITOR AT OUTLOOK, BASED IN KASHMIR

EIGHTY-FOUR-year-old Yaseen Zahra sits on a wooden ledge covered with a faded namda (woollen rug) at the Khangah-e-Mo'alla, a 650-year-old shrine in the middle of Srinagar, built in the memory of a Sufi scholar and saint from Iran's Hamadan province, also known as Shah-e-Hamadan. Zahra is the mujawir (traditional caretaker of the shrine), like his father and his grandfather. He is among hundreds of mujawirs who were pushed aside after the Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board—now under the control of the Union government since the abrogation of Article 370— issued a directive in August 2022. The board banned nazr-o-niyaz, the age-old practice of devotees offering alms to shrine caretakers. Zahra’s money box was taken away too.

“I don’t take a rupee,” he says. “Not from anyone. The income that comes from the shrine’s property goes to the government, including the money people leave in the donation boxes.” Still, he says he won't leave this place. “I've given my life to this place. I'll stay here as long as I breathe,” he says.

He nods towards an elderly man sweeping the courtyard. “He doesn’t get paid. He comes here because he wants to. Will the government, which measures everything in money, ever understand devotion that asks for nothing in return?”

In every corner of the Kashmir Valley, there are shrines, mosques, seminaries and Sufi lodges. Like many other places, in Kashmir too religious and charitable land was often created through oral trust-based agreements. A Sufi lodge might have been built where a mystic often stopped to pray and share his teachings with the local community.