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

THE WARRIOR SAINTS
ash and smouldering charcoal. To the beat of drums the dervishes
stepped one after the other onto the fiery carpet. Brandishing cudgels
over their heads, they slowly, dancing in time, moved along the ditch,
invoking the saint. Participants of the ritual used to be in such a deep
trance, that burning coal and ash did not cause them any serious
burns. Perhaps because of these ‘circus-like’ performances of his
disciples Shah Madar also became the patron saint of jugglers,
acrobats and others who earned their keep by exhibiting tricks with
monkeys, snakes and bears.
In spite of the horrible reputation of the Madaris their dargāh in
Makanpur attracted thousands of pilgrims. The main reason for this
was their reputation for curative magic: Shah Madar cured snakebites
and scorpion stings and treated male impotency. Strict and pious
Bada’uni confessed that having visited the tomb in Makanpur, he
‘was captured in the net of desire and lust’, however, according to
his own testimony, he received ‘chastisement for that sin even in this
world’ (Schimmel 1980: 136). Unlike any other ziyārat pilgrimage to
Makanpur was not flaunted, since it presupposed in the man concerned
a certain deficiency. It appears that veneration of Shah Madar
was influenced by Hindu erotic cults to a greater extent than was
devotion to Ghazi Miyan.
For this very reason women were strictly prohibited from entering
the tomb, but even in their midst, behind the parda, legends were in
circulation about Shah Madar’s ‘miracles’ which supposedly gave a
boost to male potency. Mrs Meer Hassan ‘Ali, an English lady who
left behind famous records of nineteenth-century Muslim India,
visited Kanpur more than once and wrote about the reason for this
prohibition:
I have conversed with a remarkably devout person, on the
numerous extraordinary stories related of Maadhaar’s life,
and the subsequent influence of his tomb. He told me that
women can never, with safety to themselves, enter the
mausoleum containing his ashes; they are immediately seized
with violent pains as if their whole body was immersed in
flames of fire. I spoke rather doubtingly on this subject, upon
which he assured me that he had known instances of one or
two women who had imprudently defied the danger, and
intruded within the mausoleum, when their agony was
extreme, and their sufferings for a long time protracted,
although they eventually recovered.
(Meer Hassan ‘Ali 1975: 374)
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