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Journalism of Courage
His ancestors played the shehnai at Pir Mohammed Shah Dargah for two and a half centuries,six times a day. This sound was throttled in 1985 when the trustees of the dargah decided to discontinue the tradition. The last shehnai player,Mohammad Iqbal Langa,who is a Gaurav Puraskar recipient,was asked to vacate the premises. This led to a legal battle that Langa lost; and he left the place last week.
Langa says that till 1969,there were four musicians at the dargah. In the notice to vacate,I was offered Rs 3 lakh but that amount was not enough to buy a decent house in the city. So,I rejected the offer, said Langa,who has four daughters,one mentally unstable son and a hearing and speech impaired brother to look after. We were paid Rs 204 per month for playing the shehnai and Rs 4.50 to buy oil for the lamp. I could make both ends meet because of a very nominal monthly rent of Re 1 (now Rs 15) and income from performing at other places. The trustees,realising the market value of the 320 sq ft room,asked me to vacate it, said Langa,a native of Katosan in north Gujarat.
The disputed spot is located opposite the main entrance of the dargah where shehnai was played since the days of the Gujarat sultanate.
Langa met chairman of Gujarat Wakf Board A I Saiyed on September 18 and gave him a memorandum seeking help.
Dr Habib Kakiwala,president of dargah trust,said that Langa had no right to stay at the place as he was not even a tenant. We allowed him to use the place till the time he was playing the instrument. Later,when the new board of trustees decided to discontinue the practice on religious grounds,he was supposed to vacate the place, he said,adding that instead of securing his future by shifting to a better place,Langa wasted four decades in playing the instrument despite managing to earn a very small amount. We tried convincing him not to go to court, Kakiwala added.
The saint buried at the dargah,Hazrat Pir Mohammed Shah,was a scholar from Bijapur,Karnataka. He was born in 1688,moved to Ahmedabad in 1711,and passed away in 1749. His collection of original manuscripts and books is preserved in the dargah.
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