Ambiguous traditions and modern transformations of Islam: the waxing and waning of an ‘intoxicated’ Sufi cult in Mirpur

Against current debates about the gradual ‘Islamisation’ of South Asia by Sufi cults, and the shifting ambiguity and fixity of religious boundaries in colonial India, this article is an account of the cult of the Qadiriyya-Qalandariyya saints in the Mirpur district of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Mirpur is perhaps best known in Pakistan for its diaspora, especially in the United Kingdom where there is a significant literature on the cultural and economic dimensions of that now longstanding presence. However, there is still little specific or detailed ethnography of homeland traditions of Mirpuri religiosity. Based upon research in Mirpur and Britain, this article is an original attempt to fill this significant gap. It focuses on the cult of two ‘intoxicated’ Sufi saints at Kharri Sharif, the most significant shrine complex in the region, and makes use of textual sources of sacred biography and romantic poetry, as well as first-hand participant observation. In this regard we follow Werbner and Basu (1998) who view Sufi Islam as ‘a single, total, symbolic reality'. We also adopt their innovative agenda for study of ‘the connections [and, we suggest, the possible disconnections] between Sufi cosmologies, ethical ideas, bodily ritual practices and organisational forms'. Ultimately, it is argued that the Qadiriyya-Qalandariyya cult is presently waning, having produced no living saint to act as ethical guide since the beginning of the twentieth century. Moreover, while the popularity of demotic ritual embodying a Sufi cosmology continues unabated in Mirpur, since Partition a neo-orthodox epistemology has (rather belatedly) begun to transform dominant socio-religious discourses in the region. Indeed, Kharri Sharif and the income from its offerings have also come under the control of the ministry of awqaf (pious endowments). Thus, the Qadiriyya-Qalandariyya cult appears to lack both the charismatic leadership and organisational autonomy that has allowed other Sufi cults to imagine ‘spaces of potential freedom' beyond the stranglehold of the postcolonial state.