Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [81]
The point is of course that, as this interview clearly indicates, in practice the pirs and their families cannot genuinely advance either local education or local democracy, as this would strike directly at the cultural and social bases of their own power. This brings out again the tragic tension in Pakistan between the needs of modern progress and the needs of social and political stability. The traditions and structures which prevent Islamist revolution and civil war also help keep much of the population in a state of backwardness and deference to the elites.
As these particular PPP pir families also demonstrate, they play a very valuable role in bridging the Sunni – Shia divide and hindering the rise of sectarian extremism. These pir families are publicly Sunni, but are generally known to be in private largely Shia (like the Bhuttos and Zardaris). Many saints, their traditions and their descendants in Pakistan are therefore not bound by the Sunni – Shia divide, but can be Sunni, Shia, or something undefined in between. This makes them very different from the Islamic scholars and judges of the towns, whose entire tradition is concentrated on precise learning and the drawing of precise distinctions on the basis of written sources.
It would be a mistake, however, to see the cults of the saints as purely rural or as purely derived from the past, and therefore – an assumption which is often derived consciously or unconsciously from the other two – doomed gradually to be eclipsed either by Western-style secularism, or by the modernist Islamism of the new urban radicals. Some of the greatest and most ancient Pakistani shrines, in Lahore and Multan, were created by their founding saints in great cities and have large followings among local businessmen (a point discussed further in the chapter on the Punjab). Others were originally in the countryside, but have been incorporated into Pakistan’s mushrooming cities.
Nor are the shrines of Pakistan only about the worship of long-dead saints and their descendants. New local preachers are emerging all the time. Sometimes they emerge from the followers of existing shrines, like Pir Mir Ali Shah, who in the 1930s and 1940s greatly increased the fame of the ancient shrine of Golra Sharif near what is now Islamabad. In several cases in recent decades preachers have succeeded in establishing new and famous places of pilgrimage. A notable example is the shrine of Pir Hazrat Shah at Ghamkol Sharif in the NWFP. Hazrat Shah established himself there in 1951, and gained a reputation for holiness, preaching and miracles which attracted many followers, especially in the Pakistani armed forces.
The network of this shrine extends to large parts of the Pakistani diaspora in Britain. As Pnina Werbner has documented, the growth of this shrine’s following in Britain formed part of a movement which saw the influence of the scripturalist ‘Deobandi’ school pushed back among British Muslims in the 1970s and 1980s.8 The madrasah at Golra Sharif also sends preachers to Britain.
However, there are lots of new pirs unknown beyond their immediate neighbourhoods. Any Muslim can claim to be a saint, on the basis of a vision, or the appearance of another saint in a dream. To make good the claim, however, requires above all personal charisma, natural authority, psychological insight and good judgement in giving advice and solving local disputes. An ability to perform miracles or – depending on your point of view – a lot of luck are definite assets. Most such newly emerged figures never do become more than small local holy men. A few attract much more considerable followings. Often, this will be a process stretching over generations, with an impressive disciple succeeding the original pir and attracting yet more support.
Thus Pir Hasan Baba, a new saint