Citizen Hope: Stuck on the Threshold

One of Mumbai’s landmarks, Haji Ali is located on an islet in the Arabian Sea 500 yards off the shore. Niaz distinctly remembers the excitement of walking the narrow pathway surrounded by water, leading to the dargah. The complex was spacious enough for children to run around and play after they had prayed to the dargah’s patron saint Sayed Peer Haji Ali Shah Bukhari. The cool marble floor and sea breeze offered a respite from the relentless heat as the elders sat chatting, nibbling on snacks or chana.

By the time Niaz was studying philosophy at Wilson College, the frequency of such visits reduced. But every once in a while, when her colleagues at Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) from other cities would be in Mumbai, she would make it a point to take them for a visit.

Noorjehan Safia Niaz

On one such visit in 2012, Niaz was taken aback when informed that women were no more allowed in the inner sanctum of the dargah. “When I visited Haji Ali in March 2011, my colleagues and I could enter the sanctum and offer our prayers. But at some point between then and April 2012, the new rule denying them this right, had been introduced. It is a blatant discrimination against women and hence, a denial of our fundamental right to equality,” says the 46-year-old activist and co-founder of BMMA.

Bent over a pile of documents in her Bandra East office, Niaz is preparing for the court hearing on Wednesday afternoon. Although the case is still on, she is hopeful that BMMA’s battle against the trustees of Haji Ali dargah will eventually win back women their right to enter the sanctum. “When we learnt of the rule, our first reaction was to approach the trustees for a discussion on the subject. But we soon realised they were beyond reason,” says Niaz, whose PhD thesis looked at community structures among Muslims.

The president of the trust, she recounts, cited “bizarre” reasons for the imposition of the rule. “They claim the rule is a means to correct a mistake the dargah trustees have made all these years because according to the Quran, women are not allowed inside mosques or dargahs. We countered it by asking how then were we allowed at Haji Ali for over 600 years? When they couldn’t come up with a coherent response, they said women aren’t careful of their palloos when bowing down to pray and so, the rule is for their own safety,” says Niaz.

Between 2012 and 2014, BMMA made several attempts to get the rule suspended. They approached the minority commission and even appealed to local politicians but it yielded no result as the matter was deemed “religious”. Niaz was left with no option but to file a PIL. “We are fighting the case on two grounds. The first and most important is that the rule is against Right to Equality (of gender). Secondly, it is also against Islam, which doesn’t differentiate between man and woman,” she explains.

BMMA is citing as their key argument the initial set-up at Haji Ali. Until about 20 years ago, says Niaz, both men and women could enter and exit the sanctum through the three doorways, also intermingling in the process. However, this changed when the number of visitors increased. One of the three doors was barred and the sanctum divided into two halves. While men entered through one door, offered prayers and left through the same exit, women used the opposite entrance, located in the other half of the sanctum. “If safety is a concern, this previous arrangement ensures women and men don’t intermingle. I don’t see why women should be banned from entering the sanctum at all,” points out Niaz, who started BMMA with Zakia Soman in 2005. The movement has since been working in 16 cities across India in the field of education, health, equality rights for Muslim women.

BMMA has conducted a survey of 19 dargahs in Mumbai. Their findings reveal that only seven don’t allow women entry in the inner sanctum. Of these, six have always had this rule while Haji Ali is the only dargah that chose to modify it. “Even the other popular dargah, Makhdoom Ali Mahimi dargah (popularly known as Mahim dargah), allows women entry. In their arrangement, groups of men and women take turns to enter the sanctum,” Niaz adds. The Khwaja Gharib Nawaz dargah, popularly known as Ajmer Sharif, too, allows women entry while Hazrat Nizamuddin dargah in Delhi does not.

The response to the PIL from within the Muslim community has been largely encouraging. But there are sections, especially the conservatives and followers of the Wahabi-Salafi ideology, who support the move by the trustees. Niaz, in fact, suspects that the current trustees are supporters of the ideology. “The dargah has been undergoing repairs the last few years. But where’s the money coming from? Usually, money comes in with some ideology; it’s the way Salafis across the world have been expanding their reach. Whenever a conservative trend takes over, women are the first to be targetted. I have no way to prove all this but it’s a hunch,” she says.

What makes the battle for BMMA tougher is the fact that most mosques in the city also do not allow women. But this, she says, is likely because of the space crunch in the city. “Mosques outside Mumbai, in Osmanabad, Solapur, have a separate space for women to offer prayers in a mosque. But only a handful of such mosques exist in Mumbai.” Dismissing the argument that Islam traditionally doesn’t allow women in the mosques and dargahs, she cites the example of the Kaba in Mecca. “There, throughout the year, thousands of men and women pray together and also offer namaz shoulder to shoulder. And what bigger example than the Kaba for our spiritual and religious leaders to follow?” she says.