Minarets, mosque & Kalupur station’s road to redevelopment

While the minarets have survived over the years, the Hazrat Kalu Shaheed dargah, located south of the station and around 800 m from the shaking minarets, is facing eviction by the Rail Land Development Authority, which claims it is an “unauthorised” structure.

Even as the mujawar (caretaker) of the dargah, Sabirhusen Malek, claims the structure is over 500 years old and that it is suspected to have existed since the era of Mahmud Begada in the 15th century, he admits there is no documentary evidence of it, except for the signature yellow sandstone with which all of Ahmedabad’s ancient architecture is built.

Documented history indicates that Kalupur derived its name from a nobleman in Mahmud Begada’s court, referred to as Malik Kalu or Haji Kalu. He, however, saw a fall from grace.

In A History of Gujarat, where Manekshah Sorabshah Commissariat, a history professor at Gujarat College in 1938, dwells upon the period between 1297-98 to 1573, notes Haji Kalu’s dishonourable execution after falling victim to deceit. It states, “He (Haji Kalu) and another noble, in 1466, gave asylum to Baha-ul-Mulk who had killed a trooper, and who persuaded two of his retainers to go to the Sultan and say that they were guilty of the murder, and they were executed. When Mahmud came to know of the true facts, he ordered Malik Kalu and the other noble (Malik Haji Imad-ul-Mulk) to be executed… while Baha-ul-Muik, the real culprit escaped.”

Julta Minara Sidi Bashir Mosque near Kalupur Railway station in Ahmedabad. (Express photo by Nirmal Harindran)What has stood the test of time reasonably are two minarets towering at around 100 ft, around 500 m away from the Kalupur railway station. Situated north of the railway station, the minarets are known as the Sidi Bashir Masjid Shaking Minarets. Shaking one minaret causes vibration in the other even as the passage between them remains still. The minarets, Ahmedabad’s tallest, continue to pique interest for their unique design and engineering.

The mosque supposedly gets its name from Sidi Bashir, an African-origin slave who was in the service of Sultan Begada. Sir TC Hope, a British bureaucrat posted in Ahmedabad for several years in the second half of the 19th century, ascribed the construction of the mosque either to Sidi Bashir or to Malik Sarang, a noble of the court of Mahmud Begada, who founded the adjoining quarter of the city, called Sarangpur after him.
According to the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s heritage records, the mosque and its pair of minarets are believed to have been built by Malik Sarang in 1452.

James Burgess, in his The Muhammadan Architecture of Ahmadabad, published in 1905, notes that the mosque was destroyed in 1753, when the Marathas clashed with then “Muhammadan deputy viceroy Jawan Mard Khan Bibi”. Painting the scene of Kalupur from the early 1900s, Burgess writes, “One angle of the tomb with two pillars has fallen, and the rest of it, supported by thirty pillars, is occupied by faqirs and grass dealers, who have divided it up by mud walls, cook in it, and keep it in disorder. It stands on a piece of Government waste ground in the railway suburb, measuring 2027 square yards…at the south end of the Railway station platform, stand the two largest and loftiest minarets at Ahmadabad. They are apparently about 95 or 100 feet in height. All traces of the mosque to which these magnificent towers belonged have vanished and its very designation is lost. They narrowly escaped removal to make room for the railway, and at a later date it was proposed to incorporate them in a new station to be designed in the Muhammadan style.”

While the shaking minarets have heritage status and the railway authorities are leaving them untouched, the authorities refuse to confer such status on the dargah unless they are shown the requisite paperwork.
Meanwhile, in a breather for the dargah, the Gujarat High Court earlier this month directed the railway authorities not to proceed with the eviction notice issued to the shrine.