Maha CM Eknath Shinde visits Haji Malang Dargah in Kalyan on Saturday
Maha CM Eknath Shinde visits Haji Malang Dargah in Kalyan on Saturday
Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde will be visiting the Kalyan Haji Malang shrine on Saturday. This comes nearly two months after his commitment for the “liberation” of the Dargah, claimed as a ‘temple’ by the right-wing groups.
Shinde visits the shrine every year but this is for the first time that he visits the place following his January 2 statement to fulfil people’s wish to “liberate” the shrine.
According to Shrikant Shinde, Kalyan MP, CM Eknath Shinde’s son the Malanggad Yatra started by the late Anand Dighe will be held on February 24. Dighe had laid down the slogan that ‘Hindus’ administration will be the dawn of the liberation of Malang Gad’. It is with this intent that the CM is working now as well. He requests the people to show up in large numbers for the February 24 yatra which will be attended by the CM.
Notedly, the Haji Malang Dargah in Thane district is nestledon a hill in the south of Kalyan and is named after the medieval Sufi saint Haji Abd-ul-Rahman, popularly known as Haji Malang Baba.
In the mid-80s, reportedly, the local unit of the Shiv Sena led by Anand Dighe, Eknath Shinde’s political mentor, enbarked on an agitation claiming that the structure was, in fact, an old Hindu shrine belonging to the Nath Panth, an order of yogis. The Shiv Sena was the first to start a campaign to “reclaim” the said structure, which they refer to as Malanggad.
On January 2, CM Shinde raked up the issue again by saying that he was committed to the centuries-old structure’s “liberation”.
Eknath Shinde articulated in the midst of addressing the ‘Malanggad Harinam Mahotsav’, a religious gathering in Thane district, on January 2 that he is aware of people’s feelings about Malanggad.
After Anand Dighe started the liberation movement of Malangggad we have started saying ‘Jay Malang Shri Malang’. He wants to let you know that there are certain things that cannot be said in public. He is very well aware that there are certain beliefs that people have in their hearts about the liberation of Malanggad.
Eknath Shinde will not stay quiet till he fulfils the wishes, CM Shinde said while addressing the ‘Malanggad Harinam Mahotsav’, a religious gathering in Thane district, on January 2.
On the history of the Haji Malang Dargah the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency which was published in 1882 refers to the Haji Malang Dargah structure stating that the shrine built in honour of Arab missionary Haji Abd-ul-Rahman, who came with several followers and settled on the lower plateau of the hill, was in existence since the 12th century.
Located on the lowest plateau of Malanggad, a hill fort 3,000 feet above sea level on the Matheran hill ranges, the Haji Malang Dargah is revered by both Hindus and Muslims.
Chandrahas Ketkar, one of the members of the trust that runs the dargah, whose family has been managing it for the past 14 generations, had earlier mentioned that “anyone claiming that the dargah is a temple is doing it for political mileage.
In 1954, the Supreme Court in a case related to control of the dargah within the Ketkar family observed that the dargah was a composite structure that cannot be governed either by Hindu or Muslim law, but only by its own special custom or by general law of trusts.
The trust has had both Hindu and Muslim members, and while the shrine remains a dargah, Hindus continue to perform aarti on its premises on full moon day.
Patrons of the Haji Malang Dargah observe the ‘Urs’, which is the death anniversary of the Sufi saint, on February 24 when thousands of devotees throng the shrine. During the same time, Hindu organisations also hold a Yatra on Magh Poornima, which falls on February 24 this year.
This Yatra was first started in the mid-1980s when Shiv Sena leader Anand Dighe started an agitation claiming that the shrine belonged to Hindus as it was the site of a 700-year-old Machindranath temple. In 1996, he insisted on leading 20,000 Shiv Sainiks to the shrine to offer prayers.
The then chief minister Manohar Joshi, along with Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray, also attended a prayer that year. Since then, the Sena, as well as right-wing groups, refer to the structure as Shri Malanggad.
To avoid clashes, Hindu organisations are allowed to conduct an aarti inside the premises on Magh Poornima. Shinde, who represents the Kopri-Pachpakhadi Assembly constituency in Thane, visits the shrine every year on this occasion.
News Edit K.V.Raman
