There is an incident from the era of slavery when dozens of traditional Pirs (spiritual leaders) and custodians of shrines in Punjab held a gathering. They presented themselves at the court of a great reformer and saint of the time, pleading, “Your Holiness! What is this matter that the British will now rule over us?” According to traditions, that saint entered the spiritual realm and removed the crown from the head of the British Emperor, George V, and threw it away. He removed the crown seven times, and each time, some unseen power would place the crown back on George’s head. Extremely anxious and terrified by this scene of the spiritual realm, when that saint returned to the material world, he said to the gathering, “I removed the crown from George’s head seven times, but all seven times, it was put back by the command of the Court of the Prophet (PBUH). Therefore, refrain from criticizing the British rule, because they have been granted this governance from there.” Students of ‘Deep State Sufism’ and colonial history are well aware of this incident, which was frequently narrated during the era of slavery to enslave the minds of the followers and legitimize British imperialism, so that the public would consider obedience to the British as the essence of Islam itself. A similar incident was also attributed to some elders of the Deobandi school of thought, questioning how Jihad against the British was possible when Khidr (A.S.) himself was included in the ranks of the British army.
Do you know why these supernatural stories and tales were fabricated? The primary reason was that most of the large shrines in the subcontinent were on the payroll of the British government. In reward for their loyalty, hundreds of thousands of acres of land had been allotted to them, and the British government gave them heavy annual stipends. This was the reason why these Pirs were used against their own countrymen to protect the political and military interests of the British. These estates and privileges were the actual material motives, to hide which these Pirs carved metaphysical stories so that by feeding the opium of religious devotion, the ignorant followers could be silenced, and British slavery could be proven as the will of God. Thus, when these Pirs massacred the enemies of the British and the lovers of freedom, the public, instead of calling them traitors or agents, would consider the freedom fighters themselves as rebels against God and the Prophet.This practice of playing with the public psychology has not remained limited to the past; rather, its echoes are heard in the modern era as well. You must have heard the famous statement of Orya Maqbool Jan in which he allegedly narrated a dream from the Court of the Prophet (PBUH) regarding the appointment of General Bajwa as the Army Chief. You must have also heard these traditions that Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah received a command in a dream from the Holy Prophet (PBUH) to leave England, return, and take charge of the leadership of Pakistan. Similarly, whether it is the incident of an unseen signal from the Court of the Prophet (PBUH) for the Nawab of Kalat to join Pakistan, or the mention of spiritual glad tidings behind the marriage of Bushra Bibi and Imran Khan, these are all links of the same chain. Look even at this widely popular incident of Maulana Tariq Jamil, in which he claimed that after the demise of Junaid Jamshed, a friend of his saw the Holy Prophet (PBUH) in a dream giving a message: “Tell Tariq Jamil that your friend has reached us.” A tale of the same category is also found in well-known Sufi chronicles that Data Ali Hajweri visited the house of Allama Iqbal, and Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti assumed the form of a lassi seller to churn and serve lassi to both of these great personalities.
If you believe that this political use of metaphysics is a modern adventure, then you are unaware of the cunningness of history. Setting aside these events of the past century, if we study the thousand-year history of the Muslim subcontinent, such astonishing myths will be found scattered everywhere. For instance, when Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi was unable to conquer the temple of Somnath, a story was fabricated that a saint gave him his tunic (kurta) to use as a prayer mat and pray. Mahmud spread that same tunic in the field of Gujarat and prayed for victory, which was accepted. After the victory, when Ghaznavi returned that tunic to the saint, the saint wept and said: “How foolish you were that you only asked for the victory of one temple; by God! If you had prostrated on this tunic and prayed for the Islamization of the entire India, that too would have been fulfilled.” Similarly, when Shahabuddin Ghouri faced continuous and humiliating defeats at the hands of Prithviraj Chauhan, before the final battle, a tale was created that Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti came from Ajmer into Ghouri’s dream and said: “We have bestowed Ajmer upon you.” And after the victory, when Ghouri reached Ajmer and saw Khwaja Sahab, he was astonished that this was the very same saint from his dream. The most brutal turning point in history was when Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir had his own brother and Sufi-inclined Dara Shikoh murdered, and ordered the execution of his spiritual master Sarmad Kashani (Sufi Sarmad). To provide religious justification for this incident, this story was carved that the severed torso of Sufi Sarmad picked up its head and started walking towards the Court of the Prophet (PBUH) to lodge a complaint against Aurangzeb. However, on the way, his spiritual master came, stopped him, and said: “Sarmad! Do not go there, Aurangzeb has already reached there and vindicated himself.” Consequently, Sarmad’s torso and head fell right there.If a list were to be made of such metaphysical, spiritual, and unseen events providing justification for politics, power, and wars in the history of the subcontinent, even voluminous volumes would fall short. The essence and the bitterest reality of this entire scenario is that this magical and tested formula to maintain rule over the local Muslims of the subcontinent, to crush their intellectual rebellion, and to shut their mouths has been in use for centuries and will perhaps continue to be used for centuries to come. The ruling circles, politicians, and opportunistic elements here, whenever they face a crisis or want to protect their interests, resort to these supernatural glad tidings and dreams to paralyze the consciousness of the public, because they know that a nation whose intellect is locked with devotion is not tamed by logic, but by dreams.
