By TNN
AHMEDABAD: To rebut the claims made in a PIL that the Pirana shrine is essentially a Muslim place of worship, the trust that manages the large religious precinct on the outskirts of Ahmedabad – the Imamshah Bawa Roza Trust – on Monday told the Gujarat high court that it is a Hindu place of worship.
Before the division surfaced between the Hindu and Muslim trustees of the shrine, Pirana was viewed as the epitome of the syncretic tradition of India.
In a reply filed by the trust in response to a PIL filed by a Muslim outfit, Sunni Awami Forum, the trust maintained that the Pirana shrine, which houses a 600-year-old mosque, dargah and various temples, is essentially a Hindu place of worship. To say it is fundamentally a Muslim institution is wrong, said the trust’s advocate S K Patel. The trust based its claims on a scheme approved by the authorities in 1939, based on which the trust was formed. It suggested the Pirana shrine is an institution of Hindu Satpanthi or Satsangis.
The petitioner approached the HC in June with the complaint that the present trust is trying to convert the Islamic character of the place to a Hindu religious place and invoked the Places of Worship Act. To counter this claim, the trust stated that the Saiyed trustees had approached the charity commissioner to get the religious place declared a waqf property, but it was declined. The charity commissioner’s decision was confirmed by a district court, the high court and the Supreme Court.
The PIL was filed claiming that for the past few years there have been efforts for “unconstitutional and illegal conversion of Pir Imamshah Bawa Dargah and its surrounding Muslim religious places to Hindu structures”. Even the existing dargah is being converted to Shree Nishkalanki Maharaj and Imamshah Bawa Roja is being converted to the Shree Nishkalanki Narayan Tirthdham Pranpith.
This story was originally published in timesofindia.indiatimes.com.
