In an effort to mount pressure on the trustees of Haji Ali Dargah in Mumbai to allow women inside its barred core worship area, an 11-member delegation from the Mumbai-based forum ‘Haji Ali Sab Ke liye’ on Monday visited the mazaar (grave) of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti (Gharib Nawaz) in Ajmer Sharif.
The eleven-member delegation comprising six women and five men, was received warmly by Syed liaqat Hussain Moini Saheb who is from the family of khadims (custodians) at the Ajmer dargah. The delegates did a ziyarat at the mazaar (grave) of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti (Gharib Nawaz) there. The delegates who did ziyarat at the mazaar (grave) at Ajmer Sharif were: Mumtaz Shaikh, Nasreen Contractor, Shabana Ansari, Varsha Vidya Vilas, Jyoti Badekar, Sujata Bhise, Javed Anand, Feroze Mithiborwala, Shahbaz Khan, Satyen Bordoloi and Amol Madame.
“The ziyarat was also to draw public attention to the fact that in keeping with the inclusive, all-embracing Sufi tradition, there was no restriction on women going right up to the mazaar of Khwaja Gharib Nawaz,” two leading delegates Javed Anand and Feroze Mithiborwala said. Anand and Mithiborwala said that the same custom was followed at the Haji Ali dargah of Haji in Mumbai until 2011-12 when the trustees took a sudden decision to create a barrier so that women could no longer go up to the mazaar of Haji Ali Baba.
Having failed to prevail upon the trustees of the Haji Ali to restore the status vis-à-vis women’s entry to the core worship area at the famous Sufi shrine in Mumbai, Zakia Soman and Noorjehan Safia Niaz, two founding members of Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) filed a PIl in the Bombay High Court. The final hearing in the matter is over and the court’s verdict is expected in July this year.
Giving the background behind the setting up of Haji Ali Sab Ke liye”, , Anand and Mithiborwala said: “We -- a group of progressive Muslims from Mumbai and representatives of over a dozen mass organisations in Maharashtra came together and launched a forum, ‘Haji Ali Sab Ke liye.”
According to the two delegates, the forum “affirms the right of women from all religions to equal access, on par with men, to what they consider sacred space”.
Incidentally, the Forum’s visit to Ajmer Sharif less than a week after gender rights activist Trupti Desai on Thursday visited the iconic Haji Ali dargah at Worli in south Mumbai.