Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to ... - blog blog blog

THE ASCETIC OF PAKPATTAN
This, for us, shocking contrast between unflagging kind-heartedness
for strangers and an indifference, verging on cruelty, towards one’s
own relatives finds an unexpected echo in the Indian history of our
own times, in the character of the modern saint Mahatma Gandhi,
whose stern exacting attitude to his wife and children was so sharply
at variance with his celebrated gentleness and love for the rest of the
mankind.
In spite of an unhappy childhood, devoid of paternal indulgence,
those of Shaikh Farid’s children who managed to escape death from
starvation in infancy grew up to become quite worthy people. Four
out of the saint’s five sons continued his work, propagating the
teaching of Chishtis in Punjab. The fifth son, a soldier, served in
the army of Ghiyathuddin Balban and died the death of a hero in a
battle against the Mongols. The saint’s three daughters, all of them
widowed early, were also notable for high moral virtues. About one
of them, Bibi Sharifa, her father used to say that had it been permissible
for him to pass on spiritual inheritance, i.e. khilāfat-nāma and
sajjāda, to a woman, he would have made them over to her without
any hesitation. Another daughter of the saint, Bibi Fatima, after
her husband Badrudin Ishaq’s death, became the object of idle talk
among the Chishtis. Since she, as many other members of Shaikh
Farid’s family, lived in the charge of Nizamuddin Awliya in his Delhi
khānqāh, persistent rumours were spread about their possible wedding,
which, however, was not confirmed.
Over all his sons and daughters, relatives and wives, however,
Shaikh Farid undoubtedly favoured his adored disciple Nizamudin
Awliya. Of all the khalīfas 18 it was to him that he bequeathed the
sacred regalia of his predecessors and also the predominant status in
the fraternity. The saint and his most talented murīd were interconnected
through murāqaba, constant spiritual concentration on
each other and intense emotionalism of companionship, which
did not cease even after Shaikh Farid’s death. This loving friendship
of a mature man and a youth, quite in keeping with the sublime
platonic relations that include a shade of homosexuality, which are
widespread amidst Sufis, is marked by many romantic episodes.
Nizamuddin Awliya, like the hero of an Eastern romance, lost
his heart to his future preceptor from hearsay, having heard in his
adolescence a qawwālī glorifying his virtues. Later, while being
educated in Delhi, he found himself to be a neighbour of Najibuddin
Mutawakkil, the younger brother of Shaikh Farid, whose accounts
only accentuated the young man’s passionate craving for a meeting
with the saint of Ajodhan. 19 It turned out that this emotion was
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