Bari Imam Complex: Govt apathy deprives devotees of spiritual intimacy

Annual urs of Potohar region’s most revered saint has not been held in five years.

ISLAMABAD:

The rusted metal sheets piled on one another to support a fragile makeshift bridge wobbled as Muqsa, struggling to find her balance, juggled her crying baby from one arm to another. The unsteady passage is a part of the makeshift arrangements for devotees who come to Bari Imam’s shrine to pray.

While calls of children selling assortments of nuts and sweets in the bordering streets and honking vans and buses at a stand lined with stalls of rose petals keep the place bustling with activity, the delay in the completion of the complex where work has been ongoing for the last five years, adds to the frustration of visitors from across the country.

Since the government began to renovate the shrine in 2008, the annual urs held in honour of the saint’s birth celebration, in which 1.2 million people used to participate, has not taken place.

Saadat Shah from the Bari Imam administration maintains a collection of news stories, documents and court orders. “We have tried our best to pressurise the government,” he said as he shuffled through his file, “But the process is too slow. We have told the authorities that the urs will not take place until the construction is complete.”

The scene at the construction site contradicts claims that it will be completed by October 15, the deadline. An official present at the site told The Express Tribune that the delayed release of funds and lack of skilled and unskilled labour had contributed to the delay, adding, there were only 150 workers on-site instead of the boasted 250 and that the structure was not all columns and beams. “Perfect execution of details on marble, metal grills and flooring requires time.”

Observing the pace of construction, Shah is worried that even the first phase of construction was not anywhere near completion let alone the second and third phase that will see the revamping of the mosque and its rooms and the renovation of the main boundary wall respectively. “It will take me another three months to complete my work,” said Tameer Hussain, the project’s electrician, looking at his unfinished business.

Meanwhile, devotees like Salman from Gujrat, now usually offer their prayers from a distance and leave. “I come here just to pay my regards. The construction of grand buildings cannot break our bond, they do not define how strong my belief is,” he said with conviction.

Islamabad’s city administration will not object to the shrine management’s decision to celebrate the saint’s birth; it is an integral part of the city’s heritage and tradition, according to Deputy Commissioner of Islamabad Amir Ahmad Ali. “It has been postponed from time to time, initially due to construction work and then on account of security concerns expressed by law enforcement agencies. The administration has no reservations if the urs is held this year, subject to clearance from the special branch of the police.”

Seated on a faded carpet, handing over numbered tokens to visitors, Adil, the man responsible for safekeeping shoes for the past 12 years, was sitting idle. He lazily reorganised the few shoes he was guarding, while visitors went in to pray. “There was a time when I would not even look up to see who the shoes belonged to. It was a strenuous job, a battlefield of women, you could say, where they would elbow one another to get their shoes numbered before others,” he recalled.

In the meantime, amidst rumblings of stone crushers and hustling of construction workers, a strong metal lock denies visitors from accessing the mausoleum of a saint who gives new hope to many.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2013.