HAZRAT  BABAJAN, A  PATHAN  (PASHTUN)  SUFI

Hazrat Babajan (d. 1931) was a female Sufi saint domiciled in her final years at the British cantonment in Poona (Pune). A Pathan Muslim by birth, and closely related to the Afghan nation, her early life is only very sparsely known. She later became famous through an episode involving the Baluch Regiment. The marginalised role of women in Islam is a convergent issue.

CONTENTS  KEY

1.     The  Pathan  Princess

2.     Journeys  and  Burial  Alive

3.     At  Poona

4.     A Triumph  Over  the  British  Raj

        Appendix: Wikipedia  Format

        Annotations

1.   The  Pathan  Princess

"It was in the early nineteenth century that a Pathan nobleman gained a daughter who was named Gul-rukh, 'rose-faced,' an appellation which she seems to have merited owing to her beauty. Her father was one of the chieftains of the Afghan empire created by Ahmad Shah [Abdali]." (1)

The date of her birth is quite elusive. Subsequent assessments varied markedly, though Gul-rukh was reputedly a centenarian at her death. (2) The earliest accounts differ in describing her geographical origin; Afghanistan and Baluchistan are the two contenders. Perhaps she was born on the Afghan borders near Quetta; the issue is not certain. The Pashtu-speaking Afghan tribes, often known as Pathans (or Pashtuns), had infiltrated the neighbouring provinces of the Punjab and Sindh in the struggles between rival dynasties (those provinces are today in Pakistan). The linguistic designation of Pashtun is now common, though until recent decades, the ethnic description of Pathan was in vogue during the nineteenth century and much later, and is copiously found in the British Empire annals. I will therefore use the well known ethnic term rather than the linguistic. A few words need to be said about the background to the main subject.

Baluchistan was the home of Baluchi tribes living a very independent existence. In 1840, a British officer described the Baluchis as the best swordsmen in the world. When the British subsequently annexed the province of Sindh, after defeating a confederacy of Baluchi chieftains, the Baluchi warriors were in demand as army soldiers. General Sir Charles Napier was impressed with their fighting spirit and reckless courage, and wished to assimilate them into British ranks. The renowned Baluch Regiment to some extent originated in 1844, though the history of that phenomenon is complex, ultimately resulting in several Regiments. The "Bellochee Battalion" of 1844 was mostly recruited from Baluchis, Sindhis, and Pathans from Sindh.

However, the milieu of Gul-rukh was not that of Baluchi tribes. Her upbringing instead followed conventions of the Afghan aristocracy. She was educated from an early age, becoming fluent in both Arabic and Persian, in addition to her native Pashtu, the Afghan language spoken by Pathans. The religious orientation in such education was pronounced, and Gul-rukh accordingly became a a hafiz-i-Quran, meaning one who learns the Quran by heart.

"From the sparse details available, it would seem probable that her family moved to, or had some connection with, a site nearer Kabul, the Afghan capital. It may have been in what later became known to the British as the North-West Frontier Province of India, the territory dividing the Punjab from Afghanistan, and which at the beginning of the nineteenth century was still part of the Afghan empire. This frontier area, and much of Afghanistan itself, was peopled by hardy Pathan tribesmen, Gul-rukh's own race." (3)

The British regarded the "independent Pathan tribes" as the most formidable of all warrior breeds. Like the Baluchis, many were agile swordsmen. In the sword dance known as khattak (primarily associated with the Khattak tribe), martial ardour could become overpowering; reputedly, even allied clans might fight each other before the main combat with the enemy. Such tendencies can be viewed in terms of the ghazi (warrior) vocation, as mediated via the Turko-Iranian sector of Islam. The Afridi tribe is probably the most well known Pathan grouping; these hill warriors guarded the strategic Khyber Pass, and gained a reputation as versatile fighters from the Mughal era onwards. The Pathan clans nurtured strong egalitarian tendencies, which to some extent tempered the role of chieftains. An agricultural livelihood was pursued, though feuds could easily occur.

The Afghan empire was created by Ahmad Shah Abdali (rgd 1747-72), who invaded the Punjab, sacked Mughal Delhi, and defeated the Marathas at the battle of Panipat. His soldiers then mutinied because of arrears in pay, and the empire subsequently fragmented until the rise of Dost Muhammad Khan (rgd 1826-63), a Pathan of the Barakzai tribe. The Sikhs had since gained control of the Punjab, and they were eventually defeated by the British, who annexed the sprawling Punjab territory.

In 1842, the First Afghan War produced a severe defeat for the British. The Pathans massacred a column of 16,000 who retreated from Kabul down the Gandamak Pass; some three-quarters of the dead were civilian camp followers, and the military were mainly Indian troops. The musket known as jezail was a strong causative factor in the death toll. There was only one survivor. The resultant shockwave reversed the confident belief that the British Empire was invincible.

Much of the politics became concerned with the threat of Russian impingement. In 1879, the British gained control of the all-important Khyber Pass via an invasion which exacted a treaty. The Afghans retained internal control of their country, though foreign relations now passed to the British. The Indian regiments in this Second Afghan War (1878-80) included Baluchis, Gurkhas, and Sikhs. Colonel Robert Warburton launched the Khyber Rifles, recruiting Afridi Pathan auxiliaries who thus provided a counter approach to their Afridi tribal countrymen. This new local regiment manned the British posts in the Khyber Pass. The old musket (jezail) was initially employed, though soon superseded by superior British firearms.

The Afghan people faced another emerging problem. After 1880, the new amir (ruler) Abdur Rahman Khan (rgd 1880-1901) ruthlessly eliminated the system of tribal and regional autonomy. "When faced with numerous revolts by his own relatives and regional groups, he waged war against his own people until he and his government had no rivals of any type" (Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, 2010, p. 5). The backlash ultimately led to a civil war in 1929, but meanwhile the British interests were in high profile.

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) participated in quelling the Pathan revolt of 1897. He served as a young lieutenant on the North-West Frontier, and was also a journalist at that time for the London Daily Telegraph. The despatches and resulting book were decidedly in the British Raj spirit, and to the detriment of the foe. Churchill wrote of the Pathans that: "A continual state of feud and strife prevails throughout the land. Tribe wars with tribe. The people of one valley fight with those of the next.... To the ferocity of the Zulu are added the craft of the Redskin and the marksmanship of the Boer.... At a thousand yards the traveller falls wounded by the well-aimed bullet of a breech-loading rifle. His assailant, approaching, hacks him to death with the ferocity of a South Sea Islander" (Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War, 1900).

The colonial viewpoint of Churchill saw the Pathans as aboriginal savages incited to fanaticism by their religion. The presence of the British army in such locations was thereby conveniently justified. Churchill did have the unfortunate experience of seeing a helpless wounded officer (or "traveller") done to death by a Pathan swordsman during a fraught engagement. The mullas (religious teachers) did indeed incite tribes to jihad (holy war). Yet there were also native grievances such as a tax on salt, the movement of British troops in Pathan territory, and the bisection of tribal lands. By August 1897, the Afridi and Orakzai tribes had assembled 15,000 men against the occupying British and Indian army force of 37,000. By November the occupying force on the Frontier had become 70,000 strong, the largest ever mustered by the British in their Indian operations until that date. This was largely a sepoy army.

The imposed bisection of Afghan tribal lands refers to the Durand Line agreement of 1893 between the British and the Afghan amir Abdur Rahman Khan. That agreement officially separated India from Afghanistan via a disputed frontier. The tribal resentment caused an attack upon the British garrison at Malakand, which required a relief force in 1897 (involving Churchill). The siege was instigated by Saidullah, a militant Pathan faqir or holy man, very much of the orthodox type; he preached jihad (holy war), an emphasis frequently leading to complications. Saidullah also claimed miraculous powers, and led a suggestible army of thousands. A retaliatory British campaign was afterwards undertaken in that Frontier sector. Mamund Pathan villages were destroyed by the military code of punishment, and forts were blown up with dynamite.

The Mamund tribesmen encountered to their cost the deadly repeating rifles of the British forces. With military relish, Churchill described the Lee-Metford rifle as "a beautiful machine," the expansive bullets "causing wounds which in the body must be generally mortal and in any limb necessitate amputation" (Story of the Malakand Field Force, repr. 2009, p. 199). There was no difficulty for the riflemen in judging the target range up to 500 yards. Moreover, the cavalry lancers were in accompaniment, and "eager for vengeance, pursued, cut up and speared them [the Pathans] in every direction, leaving their bodies thickly strewn over the fields" (ibid., p. 179). Some tribes refused the offer of medical aid for their wounded, because they feared a strategem in this British gesture. Even Churchill sympathised with the untreated pains of the victims. At the end of the punishment, the Mamund Pathans stated that the reason for their rebellion was a fear of annexation.

Churchill blamed the Pathans; the British retained an inviolable aura of civilised progress in his reporting. The Pathans were indeed inclined to be warlike and ferocious; the British were more restrained and disciplined, though very punitive, and also rather more calculating in terms of their Empire assets.

The Afridis were the focus of the allied Tirah Expedition (1897-98); they had captured all the forts in the Khyber Pass and also attacked the forts on the Samana Range near the city of Peshawar. A British fear was that if the Afridis and Orakzai united, they could muster up to 50,000 warriors.

Fortified Afridi villages were systematically destroyed by two divisions of the Punjab Army Corps, some 20,000 strong (plus camp followers), though the inhabitants resisted with a constant guerilla warfare. The British officers considered the punishment to be fair play for the tribal insubordination, which had defied the subsidy granted for sixteen years by the Raj to safeguard the Khyber Pass. Afterwards, the forts of the Khyber Pass were reoccupied by the invaders, and the reluctant Afridis, being threatened with a further action of punishment, eventually agreed to pay the imposed fines and surrender their rifles.

After other vicissitudes, having been disbanded by the British in 1919, the Khyber Rifles were revived in 1946, comprising Afridi veterans of World War Two. In this resuscitation, they outlasted the British Empire and continued into the new era of Pakistan, there fronting an operation to seal the Afghan border against Al Qaeda militants, and to end the opium trade. Pathans formed a substantial ethnic group in Pakistan, and in recent years have numbered an estimated 25 million, amounting to about 15 per cent of the population. This total exceeds the number of Pathans in Afghanistan, where they constitute nearly half of the population. The vast majority of Pathans (Pashtuns) are Sunni Muslims.

2.   Journeys  and  Burial  Alive

Gul-rukh was reared under the purdah system, in which women were secluded from the outside world. Female education could not go very far, being subservient to the system of arranged marriages and patriarchal clericalism. She opposed the unwelcome marriage planned for her, preferring solitary contemplation. According to the basic report, she ran away from home on her wedding day, at the age of eighteen.

Adjusting to the changed environment could not have been easy. Gul-rukh faced a very tough male-dominated environment featuring wars and turbulent clans. Bandits abounded, and they could easily take slaves. She lost aristocratic identity, and made her way to Peshawar, the frontier city at the foot of the Khyber Pass, and affording a route from the Afghan mountain country to India. Nothing definite is known about her until her subsequent move to Rawalpindi, a city of the Punjab. In or near that city, she lived in an ascetic manner for some years, thus commencing a form of Sufi vocation. Her version of ascetic faqiri was very different to the fundamentalist mentality and jihad tendency demonstrated by Saidullah and other religious figures.

The earliest biography affirms that Gul-rukh encountered a Hindu saint, who apparently exercised a strong impact upon her. His identity escaped reporting. Dr. Ghani says that afterwards:

"She went into seclusion in a nearby mountain outside Rawalpindi and underwent very severe riyaz (austerities) for nearly seventeen months. Thereafter she came down to [the] Punjab and stayed a few months in Multan. It was in Multan, while Gul-rukh was 37 years of age, that she contacted a Muslim saint - a majzoob who put an end to her spiritual struggle by giving her God-realisation." (4)

Ghani does not name the Muslim saint, though later versions supplied the name of Maula Shah. According to the same early report, Gul-rukh returned to Rawalpindi and again contacted the Hindu saint, who this time helped her in "the return to normal consciousness." These obscure matters have been hagiologised in a later version.

Thereafter Gul-rukh commenced extensive journeys throughout North India, though also visiting Bombay. She reputedly travelled to Mecca disguised as a man, taking the difficult land route from Afghanistan to Turkey, and then travelling south via Syria and Lebanon. At the Ka'ba shrine in Mecca, she is said to have offered the customary Islamic prayers, and while in Mecca "she would often gather food for the poor, and personally nursed pilgrims who had fallen ill." (5) She also visited the tomb of the prophet Muhammad at Medina.

In the Punjab, at an unknown date, she gained some fame as a saint, but suffered extreme opposition from orthodox Muslims after uttering ecstatic words denoting an identity with the divine. The mystical reverie was considered blasphemous. Local ulama (religious teachers) were apparently at the root of this aversion, though the active party were reputedly sepoys (soldiers), and more specifically, Baluchis. According to an early report, the soldiers considered her to be a heretic, and one night they vengefully dug a pit in which they buried her alive.

Resort to premature burial in that zone has sometimes been interpreted in terms of a persisting tribal custom. More certainly, extremist censure was liable to result from nonconformist traits in Islamic society. Women had a low status in that society, but were not normally so visible. According to an early report, the same violent soldiers later found their victim sitting under a tree at the British cantonment in Poona. According to Dr. Ghani:

"The Baluchi sepoys looked upon this as a great miracle, and thus feeling convinced of her spiritual greatness, gave Gul-rukh an ovation, by bowing to her reverentially. After this incident her saintly fame spread far and wide, and she came to be universally known as Hazrat Babajan." (6)

This event has been dated to 1914, when these members of a Baluch Regiment were en route to the Near East for action in the First World War. Some of these men are said to have become devotees of the matriarch, thereafter zealously protecting her as bodyguards. The respectful term Hazrat was frequently used to designate Muslim saints.

The Baluchi soldiers are a complex subject of military history. From their tribal roots, they developed into an efficient fighting force in the Indian army, assimilating the new rifle power that made the sword comparatively obsolete. They became celebrated for a high standard of performance, and remained colourful with their distinctive red trousers, green jackets, and white gaiters. In the early years of their formation, several battalions were created, though by 1901 all of these became Baluch Regiments in what was known as the Bombay Native Infantry. All five Regiments were in active service during the Great War of 1914-18, the locations varying from Eastern countries to the Western Front. In 1914, a member of the Regiment active in France became the first Indian soldier (namely Khudadad Khan) to to be awarded the Victoria Cross. (7)

3.   At  Poona

During the British Empire era and later, Pune was referred to as Poona, and so I will here comply with the name found in the sources.

Babajan settled in Poona by 1905, though at first she had no fixed place of abode. She had formerly appeared in Bombay (Mumbai), for the second time, about 1900, apparently staying at Chuna Bhatti for a few years. There she had occasionally visited two Sufi saints in the metropolis, namely Maulana Saheb of Bandra and Abdur Rahman of Dongri. She characteristically referred to them as "my children," and they reputedly became her disciples. However, there was nothing even remotely formal about the unorthodox Sufism of Babajan, who remained aloof from all the conventional exercises and affiliations of the Sufi orders. She did not teach any doctrine. She is reported to have visited Ajmer in Rajputana, apparently in 1904, and there paid her respects at the tomb of the Chishti saint Khwaja Muinu'd-Din Chishti (d. 1236), but in her case, there was no subscription to the Chishti order.

Babajan is said to have encountered Hazrat Taj al-Din Baba (1861-1925) of Nagpur, a well known Sufi faqir with a rather eccentric profile. One legend asserts that he advised her to go to Poona, but the details are obscure. Taj al-Din (Tajuddin) was originally (though briefly) a soldier in the British army. Babajan later spoke of him with respect, but also emphasised the equality of her role.

In Poona, she at first moved between different parts of the city and cantonment, including the abject slum areas. This was the outdoor role of a street mendicant, not living in houses or hostels. She had evidently been living like this for much, or all, of her adult life, ever since she forsook her aristocratic life of purdah. Her clothes were ragged. Babajan never wore a veil, and always described herself as a man. (8) She can be interpreted as insisting upon equality with those who dominated society.

Although Muslims sometimes called her Amma ("Mother") Saheb, the name Babajan ("Father soul") was the victor, in evident deference to her preferred masculine identity.

She had developed a resistance to all discomforts. During her early days in Poona, she stayed at one period near the Muslim shrine of Panch Pir at Dighi. That vicinity was plagued with ants, and a Muslim devotee found Babajan to be covered with these insects and suffering their bites without qualm. She simply sat there with total equanimity. The concerned visitor obtained her permission to remove the ants, but was not successful. With some difficulty, he then persuaded her to go to his house, where his family laboriously removed hundreds of the offending insects. (9)

A basic feature of Babajan's career was her explicit commitment to faqiri, a term of Arabic origin which denoted the ascetic lifestyle of the Sufi renouncer, living in privation. She had no home, no possessions, no assets. However, this was not the helpless poverty of the Indian masses, but a deliberate choice made in pursuit of a spiritual objective. When devotees gifted her with presents, she would give these away to the poor. Her only belongings were the clothes she wore. There are some similarities with her contemporary Sai Baba of Shirdi (d. 1918), another Sufi faqir, and one who lived in a dilapidated rural mosque that was comfortable by comparison with her own situations. Even Shirdi Sai was not as hardy as Babajan, being afflicted by an asthmatic tendency; the matriarch was remarkably robust and of a more advanced age.

The "outdoor poverty" role of Hazrat Babajan serves to distinguish her totally from the commercial saints and gurus who gained such attention from circa 1970 onwards, including the notorious entity at Poona who selfishly invested in a large fleet of useless Rolls Royce automobiles.

In Sufi history, there were instances of the female faqir role, though for the most part very obscure and unfavoured in the conventional reports subsequent to the era of early Sufism, when female mystics were more common than in the later centuries typified by the dervish orders. "Some orders admitted women as affiliated members, though relatively few had dervishes, faqirat [female faqirs] or khawatat [female dervishes]." (10) The independent role exceptions like Babajan fit a borderline category. She has been described as a qalandar, (11) a term which is not entirely satisfactory in view of the association with male itinerants of an earlier era who could tend to an antinomian orientation (though qalandars varied greatly in their disposition).

"Female mystics frequently became hermits or solitary dervishes, and frequently had to live without the comforts provided by the system of pirs (preceptors) and khanaqahs." (12) The Sufi khanaqah or hospice was very much a male-oriented institution, and spread from Iran into India during the medieval centuries.

Dr. Ghani left the following description of Babajan, whom he knew at firsthand during her later years:

"Short in stature, firm and agile in gait, back slightly bent with rounded shoulders, skin fair and sunburnt, face broad and heavily wrinkled, high cheek bones, liquid blue eyes possessing great depths, head covered with a silvery crown of thick white hair hanging loose to the shoulders, deep sonorous voice, all conspired to make her personality very unique and unworldly. Her attire was simple, consisting of a long apron extending below the knees, a pyjamas [paejamah, or trousers] narrowed round the legs and a linen scarf thrown carelessly round the shoulders. She always went about bare-headed; the luxuriant crop of white hair - never oiled or groomed - was for all practical purposes a headdress in itself." (13)

Some Tibetan Buddhist nuns had more elaborate coiffures of thick (black) hair that have been deemed startling in some nineteenth century photography. However, those Mahayana nuns were part of a cordoning and protective monastic system, and did not integrate with mundane and public circumstances like Babajan.

Babajan eventually settled under a neem tree near the mosque of Bukhari Shah in Rasta Peth suburb. Crowds began to gather around her, and there was little space. Devotees requested her to choose another site for greater convenience, but she refused. She only moved when a large banyan tree nearby was chopped down to make the road wider. It is evident that she preferred trees to municipal developments, which were basically concerned with the new motor traffic that supposedly represented advanced civilisation.

Babajan moved to another neem tree, this time in the Char Bavadi vicinity on Malcolm Tank Road, and on the fringe of the cantonment. Only after some months did she permit devotees to erect a simple shelter made of sacks (the common gunny cloth). Here she stayed for the rest of her life, meaning over twenty years. The site was at first extremely unaccommodating, the dirt road being notorious for mosquitoes and nocturnal gatherings of roughnecks and thieves. Yet within a decade, "the locality underwent a metamorphosis surpassing all expectations," and became "a place of pilgrimage for people from all over India." (14)

The nocturnal factor of thieves and drunkards was offset by allegiance from Muslim soldiers (sepoys) in the local barracks, who seem to have contributed to Babajan's growing fame. The sepoys believed in miracles that were attributed to her. (15) Their tendency to form a bodyguard probably originated in an objection to the local underworld of thieves and loiterers. One thief stole a shawl from her body while she lay resting, and another roughly snatched two gold bangles from her wrists, drawing blood. However, Babajan expressed annoyance when her supporters wished to punish the culprit (A Sufi Matriarch, p. 54). The shawl and bangles were gifts from devotees, and meant little to her. She was customarily benign towards the socially depressed.

The devotee visitors comprised a Muslim majority, though including some Hindus, and also a minority of Zoroastrians. Babajan did not distinguish between people on the basis of religion; she was indifferent to doctrinal rigidities, and called everyone "child" (bacha). She did not discourse or give sermons, but generally talked only very briefly. She spoke in Pashtu, Persian, and Urdu (a dialect of the Indian Muslims). She preferred allusive speech to anything that might sound dogmatic.

"One of those who approached her was a certain Zoroastrian, formerly a dervish, but now a grey-haired businessman inured to the ways of the world. He understood more than most the origins of the matriarch who graced the neem tree, since he had long been accustomed to sufi perspectives and had himself experienced a complex life in relation to those perspectives." (16)

This unusual ex-dervish, if that is the right description, was Sheriar Mundegar Irani (1853-1932), an emigre from Central Iran and a resident of Poona in his final years. His contact with Babajan was completely eclipsed by the instance of his son, Merwan Sheriar Irani, now more well known as Meher Baba (1894-1969). The junior encountered Babajan in 1913 at the neem tree in Char Bavadi. That episode became celebrated in fairly numerous accounts thereafter.

"Of strong sufi associations, this matriarch [Hazrat Babajan] lived in the same cantonment zone of Poona as Merwan's family. It was in May 1913 that Merwan began to frequent her makeshift abode under the neem tree in the Char Bavadi locality. He visited her every evening, but their meetings were almost completely silent.... In January 1914 Merwan's mother Shirin was horrified to discover early one morning that he could not speak and was lying on his bed with wide open but vacuously staring eyes. He lay like this for three days to her even greater alarm.... Medical treatment produced no change in Merwan's extraordinary condition." (17)

Ten years later, Zoroastrian followers of Babajan were apparently still a marginal factor at the neem tree. There was a strong orthodox Parsi opposition to the Muslim saint, the Zoroastrian fire temple instead being viewed as the due focus of attention. A report from Mehera J. Irani, a Zoroastrian woman, describes some aspects of the situation in 1924.

Mehera, her mother Daulatmai, and her sister Freni would visit Babajan in the evenings, when many devotees attended after their daily work. Mehera relates that the evening was more favourable to her own family because they would have stood out more in the daytime to Zoroastrian passers-by who were disapproving. Yet Daulatmai resisted the censure, and would also visit Babajan in the mornings, taking a gift of fruit and vegetables.

Mehera relates that Babajan, due to her advancing age, now sat on a seat, made for her by Meher Baba some years before. In accordance with custom, the male devotees sat on one side and the women on the other. Babajan sat so that she was turned more in the direction of the men. She habitually redistributed the food that was brought to her, as she herself needed very little. She would also send someone to bring tea from one of the nearby stalls that had appeared, and this commodity was shared likewise. Plaintive qawali songs were often sung in Urdu, these reflecting mystical themes popular in the Muslim repertoire.

"Babajan hardly spoke, and when she did it was very softly. People would talk to her, and she would sit and listen and nod her head, sometimes turning to see who was sitting amongst the women." (18)

4.  A Triumph  Over  the  British  Raj

There was an underlying factor to Babajan's life in Poona. "Not far away, almost within earshot, the army of the Raj performed their drill and the officers' wives assembled for decorous tea parties." (19)

The gap between the British Raj and the Indian public was vast. The Poona cantonment, founded in 1818, was a satellite of the Viceroy's distant mansion, and a training ground for troops. The early planning of the cantonment involved four square miles for European and native Indian troops, and with various amenities for the officers. Growth of the adjacent urban precincts was encouraged as a source of supplies for the army. The surrounding native populace were tolerated, though the British assumption of rulership was unassailable.

After ten years in Char Bavadi, Babajan predicted that a destructive storm would hit Poona, and this did in fact happen soon after. A tornado occurred, accompanied by heavy rainfall; trees were uprooted and some houses collapsed. Yet despite pleas from devotees for her to take shelter in one of their homes, Babajan remained under the neem tree in accordance with her lifestyle of faqiri. She survived, but the local devotees (said to have numbered hundreds by that time in Poona) decided that a proper shelter must be provided for her instead of the makeshift awning of gunny sacks.

Hazrat Babajan quite literally lived on the level of India's poor. She had no assets, no possessions, and lived outdoors like so many of the street indigents. The comparison with colonial tendencies is pronounced. The British Governor-Generals lived in grand style, and annually retreated (along with other officials) to Simla to escape the summer heat. The British governing capital moved from Calcutta to Delhi in 1912. A Viceroy's House, or palace, commenced construction that year, and was not finished until 1929. The final cost of this ambitious project soared to over £877,000, more than twice the figure originally allocated, and amounting to over £35 million in contemporary economic terms.

Permission from the aloof Cantonment Board was necessary for the comparatively trifling shelter which devotees desired for Babajan under the neem tree. The officials at first resisted, interpreting the gatherings of devotees as a serious blockage to traffic, including the new motor conveyances. A few of the more prudent officials then concluded that other problems could arise if public opinion was not catered for. The new political mood of the Non-cooperation movement had dented the British complacency, and perhaps they worried about the Pathan and Baluchi bodyguards who were seen near Babajan at the neem tree. These men were soldiers from the cantonment barracks, and the extent of allegiance was probably an x factor for military consideration.

The British army had advantageously assimilated strong native ingredients, varying from the Nepalese Gurkhas to Baluchis, Pathans, Rajputs, and Sikhs. During the nineteenth century, that army was formed in such a way as to comprise a ratio of "nearly one [European] to two [native Indians] for the army as a whole (65,000 to 140,000)." (20) The British often relied on native troops in emergencies. There was also the calamity which became lamented as the massacre at Amritsar in April 1919, which was a British fault and not a native one.

The erring and ultra-conservative Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer (1864-1927) ordered Gurkha and other native riflemen to shoot at the peaceful crowd in Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar. That action killed nearly four hundred people and injured over a thousand. These are the figures given in official reports, though other versions mention over a thousand dead. "I thought I would be doing a jolly lot of good," Dyer said afterwards in justification, 21 (21)though the more level-headed British regarded him as a serious liability, including army officers and the British government. He became known as the "Butcher of Amritsar." Twenty-five Baluchi and Pathan riflemen also participated in the massacre, and some officers may have feared what could happen if native troops ever fired the other way, as they did in the Mutiny over sixty years before.

The minority of Poona cantonment officials were successful in evoking a new Board decision to build at military expense a permanent weatherproof dwelling under the neem tree. The new Raj attitude now amounted to: "Hazrat Babajan had somehow become a celebrity, on their territory, and was their responsibility." (22)

Babajan's attitude to these developments was enigmatic. She allowed the workmen to build a structure of masonry and wood, with a roof of metal sheeting. This comprised a single room and a verandah. Prestigious members of the Board then decorously invited her to move in to her new home. She flatly refused to do so.

The Board were now confronted with their error in having constructed the new abode a few feet away from Babajan's chosen position at the base of the tree. The tree was obviously very important (and far more so than the noisy and polluting motor vehicles now appearing, and which were so often deemed a municipal priority). Babajan is known to have exercised a sense of humour, evident from various episodes related about her. Now the Board (all males of course) had to devise a solution to their predicament.

"An extension was made which connected the new dwelling with the trunk of the neem tree. The Board officials then gratefully retired from the scene, leaving Hazrat Babajan the virtual queen of Char Bavadi, legally installed in a British government building. As far as they were concerned, she had won." (23)

At her death in September 1931, "her funeral procession was a tremendous affair, never accorded to any dignitary or royalty in the annals of Poona." (24) Thousands of Muslims and Hindus are reported to have attended the funeral. The female faqir had triumphed over all odds. Her tomb (dargah) was built on the spot where she had lived under the neem tree, and in accordance with her express wishes.

APPENDIX: Wikipedia  Format

Commentary dated February 2011:

The current Wikipedia entry on Hazrat Babajan (accessed 08/02/2011) is here disputed. That article displays a pervasive commitment to the devotional report of Bhau Kalchuri, a Hindu representative of the Meher Baba sect. Kalchuri's translated Hindi biography (Lord Meher) of the Zoroastrian Meher Baba is not a paramount guide to the Muslim inhabitants of India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. His brief chapter on Babajan is largely derivative, (25) and the endnotes give no indication of due sources on the subject, and nor due sources on related ethnic groupings. (26)

The Wikipedia entry idiosyncratically describes Babajan in the top paragraph as a "Baloch Muslim," which is not an appropriate designation, and furthermore, not found in Kalchuri, who refers to her as a Pathan princess. (27)The contraction is symptomatic of Wikipedia vagaries, and tends to obscure the Afghan connections, which are substantial. This despite the Wikipedia reference to the subject as "a Pashtun princess," though the accompanying attribution of origin to "a Muslim royal family of Balochistan" is not definitive in view of statements found in the early sources and other reports. The Wikipedia attribution is based on Kalchuri's late version, which is not comprehensive.

The same Wikipedia entry stipulates c. 1806 as Babajan's date of birth, and also states that "biography variants range from 1790 to 1806." This perspective is reductionist, and fails to give details of other assessments in published format. (28)

The Wikipedia sectarians (promoting Kalchuri) removed from the Hazrat Babajan entry the only annotated book on the subject, thus lending their beliefs and attributions an air of uncontested legitimacy. Wikipedia suppression is now notorious, and relates to sectarian affiliations. See further Wikipedia Anomalies (2010). The general pseudonymity of Wikipedia editors is a concealment of due identity, and is viewed by many academics (and some citizens) as a complication to be avoided.

One of the pseudonymous editors did refer sympathetically in 2008 to the non-sectarian book on Babajan that was subsequently deleted from the bibliography by the pro-Kalchuri bias. (29) However, the same Wikipedia editor stated erroneously that "among english [sic] speakers, however, she [Babajan] is virtually undocumented outside the Meher Baba community, who have studied her background extensively." (30) Again the preoccupation with a religious sect, and ignoring data to the contrary. There is no proof that Meher Baba devotees have extensively researched Babajan; they are to date merely promoters of the devotional version supplied by Kalchuri, as evidenced by the deficient Wikipedia entry. Indeed, the discussion page of that entry states: "few [of the Meher Baba devotees] regard [Babajan] as much more than a curious influence" (accessed 08/02/2011).

The disputed entry says that Gul-rukh "embarked on several long journeys through the Middle Eastern countries," which is a direct quote from Kalchuri. This legend is not found in the early reports, and seems impossible to confirm. The contention may have elaborated details of the first pilgrimage to Mecca, which though less well substantiated than the second pilgrimage, could nevertheless have occurred.

The same Wikipedia entry employs the theme of both Maula Shah and Hazrat Babajan as having the Sufi status of qutub, (31)  denoting a very high ranking in the spiritual hierarchy of saints specified in Sufi sources. Maula Shah (of Multan) is outrightly described as a qutub. This theme of qutubiyat is derived from Meher Baba, not Babajan. Yet the Wikipedia entry does not clarify such matters.

The disputed entry comprises a minimal guide to the subject, with markedly incomplete referencing. The Baluch Regiment are not mentioned, amongst other factors. There is instead a sub-title declaring "Master to Meher Baba," which is very much in line with the Kalchuri exegesis.

The reductionist entry is not concerned with due historical context, analysis of Sufism, or relevant social issues, and is instead clearly influenced by the factor of linkage with Meher Baba. This sectarian preoccupation is not comprehensive, but rather an indication that Wikipedia editing is less than exemplary. There have recently been other manifestations of questionable editorial activity in further Wikipedia discussion pages. (32)

The same tendency to deletion of non-sectarian sources has also been in evidence at the Wikipedia entry on Meher Baba. The pseudonymous Meher Baba sectarians (rumoured to be Americans) are so insular that they removed the book Meher Baba, an Iranian Liberal  from the bibliography. The alternative non-sectarian format will survive Wikipedia reductionism and suppression. (33)

Commentary dated September 2011:

The Wikipedia entry on Hazrat Babajan has since been revised and expanded by real name editor Stephen Castro, with the acquiescence of pseudonymous editor Dazedbythebell. The new entry cites the book A Sufi Matriarch several times, and with the consequence that my objection to Wikipedia procedure on this point is offset by the more comprehensive coverage. Other objections are ongoing.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd

February  2011 (modified September 2011)

ANNOTATIONS

(1)    Shepherd, A Sufi Matriarch: Hazrat Babajan (Cambridge: Anthropographia, 1986), p. 27, and also reporting that basic statements here utilised about the subject "were made while Babajan was still alive, and it is unlikely that they were fabricated." (ibid., p. 72 note 17). The earliest biography was brief, and written soon after the subject's death by the medic Dr. Abdul Ghani, who stated that "Babajan hailed from Afghanistan and was the daughter of a well-to-do Afghan of noble lineage." See Ghani, "Hazrat Babajan of Poona," The Meher Baba Journal (Ahmednagar-Bangalore, Feb. 1939) 1 (4): 29-39, and later reprinted in Hazrat Babajan (Poona: Meher Era Publications, 1981), pp. 23ff. The derivative report of Jean Adriel was faithful to Ghani in such statements as "Babajan was born in Afghanistan of well-to-do, aristocratic Mohammedan parentage" (Adriel, Avatar, Santa Barbara, California: J. F. Rowny Press, 1947), p. 36. More recently, Professor J. J. Roy Burman reported some people affirming that the original name of the subject was Razia Sultana, and "she is said to be the daughter of one Bahadur Shah Zaffar and had come from Afghanistan." Quotation from Burman, Hindu-Muslim Syncretic Shrines and Communities (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 2002), p. 237.

(2)     "In view of the repeated assertions as to Babajan's great age, I think it possible that she may have been born c. 1820 or even earlier" (Shepherd, A Sufi Matriarch, p. 72 note 16; see also pp. 77-8 note 54). Cf. Charles B. Purdom, The Perfect Master (London: Williams and Norgate, 1937), p. 19, who states that "her actual date of birth is not known, but it is supposed to have been about 1790, in that land of mountains, deserts, and stony plains, Baluchistan." Purdom was here repeating what he had been told by Indian devotees of Meher Baba, who was the main subject of his book. That same book reports a discourse by Meher Baba in 1927, which informed that "Babajan was the daughter of one of the chief ministers of the Amir of Afghanistan" (ibid., p. 115). That disclosure does not immediately confirm an origin in Baluchistan. Ghani does not mention Baluchistan as the birthplace, and a degree of doubt may therefore attend that attribution. Purdom's early notice of Babajan is of interest, but the conjectural date of 1790 stretches credulity. I met Purdom in 1965, and found him to be an unusually analytical follower of Meher Baba. It was evident that he did not always trust devotional reports, and indeed he was sceptical of excessive enthusiasms.

(3)     A Sufi  Matriarch, p. 29, here tending to favour the report of the subject's origin in Afghanistan. On the ethnic data, see further Olaf Caroe, The Pathans 550 B.C. - A.D. 1957 (Oxford University Press, 1958); Jules Stewart, The Khyber Rifles: From the British Raj to Al Qaeda (Stroud, Glos.: History Press, 2005). The academic system of reference now generally describes the Pathans of Afghanistan as Pashtuns. There are diverse ethnic groups in that country, including Aimaqs, Hazara, Kirghiz, Tajiks, Turkmen, and Uzbeks. The Pashtuns are located in the east and south, including the regions of Kabul and Kandahar. See further Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton University Press, 2010), including a review of recent troubled events. In 1996, the Afghan Taliban gained power in Kabul, and "were largely Pashtuns who saw all other ethnic groups as enemies" (ibid., p. 7). That Islamist regime fell several years later in 2001, and "every region of the country (including the Pashtun south) turned against them" (ibid.). The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was founded in 2001, though conflict with the Taliban continued.

(4)     Ghani, art. cit., p. 24 (1981 edn).

(5)     Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher (Meher Prabhu) Vol. One (North Myrtle Beach, S.C.: Manifestation Inc., 1986), p. 10. These details are not found in the version of Dr. Ghani, though the latter does attest that Babajan voyaged to Mecca and Medina in 1903. This detail appears in an anecdote originating from Professor Hyder Ibrahim Sayani, who taught at the Deccan College. Sayani travelled on the steamer S. S. Hyderi, and recounted a "miracle" story of how Babajan saved the boat from a cyclonic wind; via the intermediary Nur Muhammad Pankhawala, she asked all the passengers to offer a prayer. Such anecdotes were presented by Ghani in The Meher Baba Jnl, and were reprinted in Hazrat Babajan (1981), pp. 47ff. Confirmation of the voyage to Arabia is found in Purdom, The Perfect Master (1937), p. 19, whose early report relays the same date of 1903. See further Shepherd, A Sufi Matriarch, p. 44. Cf. Kalchuri, op. cit., pp. 11-12, who describes this event in terms of Babajan's second pilgrimage to Mecca.

(6)     Ghani, art. cit., p. 25 (1981 edn), and specifying "the sepoys of the Baluchi Regiment, which had only recently arrived from the North." The numerical identity of the regiment is not supplied. Cf. Burman, Hindu-Muslim Syncretic Shrines and Communities (2002), p. 237, who says that the Baluchi soldiers "had learnt about her in Peshawar and heard the miraculous story of her getting buried alive." There seems to be a confusion in this later version. In the extension to Ghani's early account, he refers to the North West Frontier Province, and says that "some of them [the Baluchi soldiers arriving at Poona] were the actual perpetrators of the tragedy" (art. cit., 1981 edn, p. 57), meaning the burial. Another and even earlier source was also explicit on the point. See Purdom, The Perfect Master (1937), p. 115, reporting a 1927 commentary by Meher Baba that is missing from Vol. 3 (1988) of Kalchuri's Lord Meher, p. 924. The Purdom version identifies the Punjab as the locale of the burial, with no reference to any town or city. This version refers to "certain Baluchis of a local regiment" as the aggressors. "When she came out of the living grave she went towards Bombay" (Purdom, op. cit., p. 115). See further Shepherd, A Sufi Matriarch, pp. 49-50, dating the Poona event to 1914 on the basis of an early notice, and mentioning that the locale of the burial was apparently Rawalpindi. Cf. Kalchuri, Lord Meher Vol. One , pp. 10-11, who favours Rawalpindi. An obscure but early Hindu source referred to the Dardanelles as the destination of the Baluchi sepoys who arrived at Poona. However, the failed Dardanelles campaign of the British in 1915 is not associated with any of the Baluch Regiments, and a confusion conceivably occurred in the transmission of the 1914 Poona episode among the devotees of Meher Baba. A substantial number of the Baluchi soldiers certainly did serve in campaigns against the Turks during the First World War. The 124th Baluchistan Infantry served in Iran and Iraq, fighting in a number of battles against the Turks, and also participating in 1918 at the decisive Battle of Megiddo in Palestine. See Shepherd, A Sufi Matriarch, p. 76 note 47, referring to the Hindu devotee C. V. Sampath Aiyengar of Madras, who was editor of a local periodical concerning Meher Baba. Indian civilians might easily have confused the routes and destinations of the soldiers. Gurkhas, Sikhs, and other contingents of the Indian army did participate in the Dardanelles campaign, which suffered heavy casualties.

(7)     See Major General Raffiudin Ahmed, History of the Baloch Regiment 1820-1939 (Abbotabad, Pakistan: Baluch Regimental Centre, 1998). The 1st Belooch Regiment was also known as the 27th Regiment of Bombay Native Infantry, and they participated in the Expedition to Abyssinia, the Second Afghan War, and the Third Burmese War. Due to the new format devised by Lord Kitchener in 1903, all the Bombay military units had 100 added to their numeral identification. Thus, the 27th became the 127th Baluch Light Infantry. They served in East Africa, Iran, and Palestine during the First World War. Meanwhile, the 26th Regiment had been reconstituted in Baluchistan, and during the 1890s recruited Baluchis, Brahuis, Pathans, and Punjabi Muslims. Their uniforms were of drab colour, but with the red trousers worn by all five Baluch Regiments. In 1903, the 26th became the 126th Baluchistan Infantry, and served in Aden during the Great War. The 2nd Belooch Regiment was raised in 1846, later serving in China and becoming the first foreign troops to be stationed in Japan. In 1883, the Duke of Connaught was appointed their Colonel-in-Chief. In 1903 they became the 129th Baluchis. During the First World War, they served in France and Belgium, and were the first Indian regiment to engage the German army. The heroic Khudadad Khan was one of their number. Sadly, this regiment suffered heavy casualties during that war. The five Baluch Regiments were amalgamated as the 10th Baluch Regiment in 1922, which later became part of the Pakistan army in 1947.

(8)      Ghani, art. cit., p. 29 (1981 edn), says that she would respond negatively to the name of Mai, meaning "mother." She would retort, "I am a man and not a woman." Ghani viewed that assertion as confirmation of a saying attributed to the prophet Muhammad: "Lovers of God are males... lovers of the world are females." There are also social dimensions to the response of Babajan which are less assimilable in orthodox terms. The low status of women in fundamentalist Islam is a strongly contested matter. With regard to the current controversy over the Islamic veil, in 2010 the Syrian government banned face-covering veils from universities. The niqab (face veil) is distinct from the burqa, a total body covering that is even more controversial. Some scholars have urged that niqab is not obligatory in Islam but amounts to a custom deriving from Arab tribal societies. The recent Taliban movement are associated with the worst impositions. The British Muslim journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown founded in 2008 the BMSD (meaning British Muslims for Secular Democracy), which resists fundamentalist constraint. On September 10th 2001, she "condemned the brutal Taliban rulers in Afghanistan, where girls and women shrouded in full burkas, were beaten and denied health and education." The following day, Al Qaeda operatives destroyed the Twin Towers in a well known American location. In the post-9/11 era, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown refers to "immigrant Muslims who came to Britain to get away from Stalinist ayatollahs, mullas and women-hating fanatic regimes in their home countries." She has stressed that "for this sensitive issue, we need enlightened political leaders who can work with the progressive Muslims and stop the relentless rise of the burka [burqa]." Quotations from "The Islamic Veil," FAIR News, February 2011, pp. 1,3. Of some related interest is Tahera Aftab, Inscribing South Asian Muslim Women: An Annotated Bibliography and Research Guide (Leiden: Brill, 2008). Dr. Aftab is also editor of the Pakistan Journal of Women's Studies (Karachi).

(9)      Kalchuri, op. cit., p. 13, identifying the devotee as Kasam V. Rafai.

(10)    J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 176.

(11)   Ghani, art. cit., p. 33, who refers to Babajan as "possessing all the characteristics of a Qalandar," a conclusion based on an unorthodox definition of salik-majzub, and which does not address the problems in Sufi history relevant to the qalandar phenomenon. It is obvious that Babajan's very unusual career posed Ghani with a dilemma of description for which no adequate terminology existed. The thirteenth century conservative Sufi classic Awarif al-Maarif sceptically refers to the qalandar as seeking to destroy accepted custom (Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam, p. 267). Babajan did not address herself to accepted custom, whether dervish or no, and was not an antinomian. Relevant to such discussion is chapter five in Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, A History of Sufism in India Vol. One (New Delhi, 1978), referring to the rather diverse male qalandar phenomenon, which included the drawback of sharing with Hindu Yogis the consumption of what appears to have been hemp, along with some other drugs (ibid., p. 303). A well known Chishti leader was stabbed by an aggressive qalandar, though many of these itinerants were absorbed into the Chishti order during the medieval era (ibid., p. 305). Qalandars also included the extremist ascetic grouping known as the Haidariyyah, who became preoccupied with piercing iron rods (ibid., p. 307). The disciples of a prominent Indian Haidari leader were responsible for mortally wounding the Sufi known as Sidi Maula, a thirteenth century event (ibid., 308). However, the Chishti annalists admit the presence of genuine mystics amongst the qalandars (ibid., p. 303). See also Drawbacks to Malamatism. Professor Rizvi could find less to report about female Sufis, who are a different category (ibid., pp. 401ff.). Hazrat Babajan might best be described as a distinctive neo-qalandar type of female Sufi faqir. In some aspects of her career, she did sequel the early qalandar itinerant spirit of independence from the khanaqah system spread by the dervish orders, associated with an establishment that was doctrinally hidebound. During the thirteenth century however, many qalandars in India began to adopt the settled lifestyle revolving around the khanaqah or Sufi centre. Babajan's early contact with a Hindu teacher is reminiscent of the the medieval qalandar tendency to affinity with Hindu ascetics, which took varied guises. The early qalandars are associated with Near Eastern locales, though an Iranian element is dateable to the eleventh century CE.

(12)    A Sufi Matriarch (1986), p. 22, and also referring to the figure of Jahanara, daughter of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. "Though formally initiated into the Qadiri order of dervishes, there was no question of her [Jahanara's] formal recognition as a member of any dervish hierarchy" (ibid.). Of related interest is the figure of Zebun Nisa (1637-1702), daughter of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (ibid., pp. 24-5). See further Tahera Aftab, Inscribing South Asian Muslim Women: An Annotated Bibliography (2008), pp. 57ff.

(13)    Ghani, art. cit., p. 28. Two well known photographs of Babajan to some extent bear out this description, though the one associated with Meelan Photo Studio underwent a degree of retouching, erasing the facial wrinkles. Cf. Burman, Hindu-Muslim Syncretic Shrines and Communities (2002), p. 237, who relays a report that Babajan "used to wear dress like men and kept short hair and that is why she was called Baba Jan - a man's name." This explanation is not totally convincing in view of other details, and certainly not for the Poona phase. However, there may well be an element of truth in this version in relation to her earlier years and the legendary first pilgrimage to Mecca, which occurred prior to the Poona phase. Another commentary says that "for a while, she [Babajan] wandered around in male attire and finally settled down in Poona" (Aftab, Inscribing South Asian Muslim Women, p. 103).

(14)    Ghani, art. cit., pp. 26-7. The date of Babajan's taking up residence at Char Bavadi escaped reporting, and "was possibly by 1910" (Shepherd, A Sufi Matriarch, p. 47). A basic emphasis applying to Babajan appears to be that "she was persecuted by orthodox religionists but gained an inter-religious following" (Aftab, op. cit., p. 112, and commenting on A Sufi Matriarch).   

(15)    See further Nile Green, Islam and the Army in Colonial India: Sepoy Religion and the Service of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 128ff., and referring to the "quotidian pleasures of tea-drinking and ganja-smoking" amongst the soldiers who gathered around Babajan (ibid., p. 139). She herself favoured tea, which she drank frequently, though the barracks milieu had incorporated drug use. Ganja refers to cannabis-smoking, a male habit in which the cannabis was generally admixed with tobacco. Professor Green describes the Islamic barracks culture of the Deccan in some detail, and supplies a version of the neglected Taj al-Din Baba of Nagpur. He also gives a brief portrayal of Babajan, and cites Charles Purdom and Dr. Ghani, observing that "those accounts, which generally overlap closely, are expanded in K. R. D. Shepherd, A Sufi Matriarch" (ibid., p. 186 note 148). See also Green, Indian Sufism Since the Seventeenth Century: Saints, Books, and Empires in the Muslim Deccan (New York: Routledge, 2006).

(16)   A Sufi Matriarch, p. 48, without reference to the identity of this Zoroastrian. The omitted identity was due to his more extensive inclusion in another manuscript I had written, subsequently published as From Oppression to Freedom (1988), a book containing some cues in Part One from Sheriar M. Irani's son Adi S. Irani, domiciled in London and whom I personally encountered. The full details of this issue were not included, though some references to Adi S. Irani did appear in the footnotes to my Investigating the Sai Baba Movement (2005), and more specifically, relevant to Part Three of that work, which investigated Meher Baba. Adi S. Irani was the informative brother of Meher Baba. See Investigating, index page 309.

(17)   Shepherd, Meher Baba, an Iranian Liberal (Cambridge: Anthropographia, 1988), p. 17. This book was ignored by the Meher Baba movement, which may be proof that the contribution had something to say. The volume was not ignored in other directions.

(18)    Mehera, ed., J. Judson (New Jersey: Naosherwan Anzar, 1989), p. 45. Mehera subseqently resided at the Meherabad ashram of Meher Baba, and Daulatmai later stayed with Freni at Nasik, maintaining silence for over twenty years at the unusual instruction of Meher Baba. "In silence my mother managed all her work; she even went to the bazaar where she would carry a slate and pencil and write in Marathi, Hindi, or Gujarati what she needed" (ibid., p. 102). Daulatmai Irani died still silent in 1952.

(19)   A Sufi Matriarch, p. 47.

(20)     Percival Spear, A History of India Vol. 2 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 146.

(21)   Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (London: Cape, 1951), p. 234. Fischer mentions 25 Gurkhas and 25 Baluchis as the riflemen, though elsewhere the latter are identified in terms of 25 Pathans and Baluch of 54th Sikhs and 59th Sindh Rifles. Some of the riflemen at first shot high into the air, but were reprimanded by Dyer for this act of consideration. According to Wikipedia coverage, the full details of the death toll were suppressed by the British authorities.

(22)     A Sufi Matriarch, p. 57. Ghani says of the initial British reaction that "had it been possible they [the Board] would unhesitatingly have had Babajan shifted to some out of the way spot" (Ghani, art. cit., p. 27).

(23)    A Sufi Matriarch, p. 58.

(24)   Ghani, art. cit. (1981 edn), p. 33. See also A Sufi Matriarch, pp. 68-9, on her last years. Babajan's tomb (dargah) is small by comparison with some others, and the adjoining road has become ever more busy. The prevalent Indian language in the cantonment area is Hindi. Professor Anne Feldhaus, a Marathi-speaking expert on Pune, has reported: "Many more Indians in Pune are Muslims, and many of them are more comfortable using Hindi or Urdu than Marathi." See further A. Feldhaus, ed., Images of Women in Maharashtrian Society (State University of New York Press, 1998). Babajan's own linguistic recourse in Poona seems to have been Urdu more than any other language.

(25)   Kalchuri, Lord Meher Vol. One (1986), pp. 7-19.

(26)    Ibid., footnotes at end of book. no page number, less than one page of notes, and no sources cited except two books featuring the teaching of Meher Baba.

(27)    Ibid., p. 7.  

(28)    The Wikipedia entry cites Charles Purdom's book The God-Man (London, 1964), in which the brief section (pp. 18-20) on Babajan disappointingly duplicates the material found in his earlier book The Perfect Master (1937). See note 2 above. Cf. Shepherd, A Sufi Matriarch, p. 77 note 52, which provides due consideration to the conservative view that Babajan was about ninety-five at the end of her life. The additional view that she "may have been born c. 1820 or even earlier" (ibid., p. 72 note 16) was too radical a tangent from Kalchuri devotionalism to be represented in the Wikipedia sectarian entry, though the revised version of 2011 has incorporated this perspective.

(29)   The editor called nemonoman stated on the Hazrat Babajan discussion page in October 2008 that "Shepherd's biography is a scholarly work," here referring to A Sufi Matriarch. I do not claim any status of scholarship, though the annotatory content of the book mentioned could not be found in the (now superseded) Wikipedia article at issue, and nor is such a feature evident in the brief Kalchuri coverage. The deletion of the book mentioned occurred in 2009, contrasting with inclusion elsewhere, e. g., Tahera Aftab, Inscribing South Asian Muslim Women: An Annotated Bibliography and Research Guide (2008), p. 112 entry 525; Nile Green, Islam and the Army in Colonial India (2009), p. 186 note 148.

(30)    From the Hazrat Babajan discussion page entry dated 28/10/2008. An anomalous comment can be found on the same discussion page from the deletionist Dazedbythebell, who stated that "Wikipedia is concerned with reporting the published sources, not omitting information that seems impossible or unlikely" (dated 08/02/2010). Dazedbythebell was a major agent of suppression and omitted information in his sectarian hostility occurring less than two months earlier. See Wikipedia Anomalies (2010). See also note 33 below.

(31)   The attribution first appeared via Ghani's article in The Meher Baba Journal. Ghani was a follower of Meher Baba, though not a typical devotee, having strong interests in Sufism. Without giving any source, he asserted that: "Hazrat Babajan's spiritual status in the [Sufi] hierarchy of saints is that of Qutub" (art. cit., p. 32, 1981 edn). She herself did not claim this high status. The theme originated with Meher Baba in the early 1920s. That theme itself is not in dispute, but contextual requirements do apply.

(32)    In addition to the matter of pseudonymous sectarian editors, the recent demonstration of Wikipedia drawbacks also involved an American administrator and librarian who uses his real name. I have already expressed my preparedness to respect the latter factor, awarding David Goodman (alias DGG) an amenable pictorial profile in a web commentary, alongside that of the real name editor and academic philosopher Simon Kidd. More disadvantageously, Goodman can be interpreted (by Muslims) as being biased against the relevant interpretation of Shirdi Sai Baba as a liberal Muslim Sufi, in contrast to the Hinduising hagiology. He would not permit Simon Kidd to apply links on Wikipedia to my article Shirdi Sai Baba and the Sai Baba Movement (2009). That article is lengthy and annotated, in contrast to many other articles and brief features gaining links on Wikipedia. Goodman was possibly influenced by sectarian arguments appearing on discussion pages and emanating from the Sathya Sai Baba sect. On the Shirdi Sai Baba discussion page (15/02/ 2010), DGG reiterated his opinion that "the only possible notability of Shepherd was as an opponent of Sathya Sai Baba," this being in reference to a web defence of mine against Wikipedia sectarian attack. He also said that "the web source [on Shirdi Sai Baba] is unusable as a reference." The attitude of David Goodman has been considered extreme by some other academics, aIlied with his Americentric tendency to focus upon library holdings in America as a rationale for what is usable. I do not claim notability, only British citizen rights to a fair assessment in the face of American democracy and sectarian harassment. By the year 2005, I had contributed, e. g., two published accounts of Shirdi Sai Baba, two published accounts of Upasni Maharaj, and two published accounts of Meher Baba. All these were annotated. Such contributions merely decoded in DGG language on the Shirdi Sai Baba discussion page to my web article Wikipedia Issues and Sathya Sai Baba (an article that arose in response to a User page attack on my books by a Wikipedia sectarian editor in 2006). Another sectarian attack from pseudonymous entities (representing the converging Meher Baba and Sathya Sai contingents) occurred on the Upasni Maharaj discussion page, encountered by Simon Kidd, though DGG did not appear in that contest. Despite the overbearing nature of his responses, David Goodman did eventually acknowledge that my tangible profile in American library holdings meant that I could not be dismissed as the sectarians wished. "His [Shepherd's] published books are in an intermediate zone, considerably more acceptable than many of the other sources" relating to Upasni Maharaj and Shirdi Sai Baba. This verdict does serve to separate DGG from the sectarians who infiltrate Wikipedia, and who are viewed as a hazard elsewhere (including academic libraries the world over). Indeed, a view of at least some (and probably many) academic librarians is that pseudonymous and other web entities who have no image identity and published output are a very unreliable source, whereas authors with real name image identity (and published output found in academic libraries) really ought to receive fair attention that is sometimes denied on Wikipedia. For some further reflections on sectarian web campaign, see my update Tulasi Srinivas and the Politics of Religion (2011). See also Tulasi Srinivas and Winged Faith (2011). On my output so far, see further Kevin Shepherd Bibliography.

(33)   The situation surrounding the Wikipedia deletion of my annotated book on Hazrat Babajan has been in question. "Nothing was done to rectify the fact that Dazedbythebell had eliminated my book A Sufi Matriarch (1986) from the Hazrat Babajan article, this action reflecting an obvious sectarian bias. The suppressive action, dating to December 2009, was reported by the academic philosopher Simon Kidd on the DGG talk page (16 February 2010), with the additional remarks that 'this is the only full biography of the subject,' and that the deletion had occurred without any discussion." Quotation from Wikipedia Harassment (2010). See also note 30 above. The deleted book has since been restored to the Wikipedia Hazrat Babajan article.

Copyright © 2011 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.