Faizan Ahmad | Team TrickyScribe: Last Friday I visited the suburban small town Dewa, a little 10 km away from Barabanki, where I was staying to attend a wedding. Dewa or called Dewa Sharif with reverence is famous for the shrine of Hazrat Waris Ali Shah, whose followers use the suffix of Warsi.
An annual mela or fare in this small town is held in the month of Kartik and 12 days before Diwali, which is also very popular not only among the followers of Haji Waris Piya but also the people living in the countryside of Dewa, 37 km from Lucknow.
Dewa has become a pilgrim town exclusively because of the mausoleum of Waris Ali Shah (1823-1905) whose followers are spread over the world and they come here to pay obeisance during the mela or Urs or any other time. Hundreds of people, belonging to different faiths, mainly women line up at the entrance of the mazar every time it is opened.
But what utterly surprised me to see a signboard on a small building, a little ahead of the mausoleum which reads in bold letters “Khanqah Aaliya Warsi Maikadah” in Urdu and English. As far as my knowledge goes Maikadah, a Persian word, is called a place where wine is served or in plain words a bar. Since it was locked that day, I couldn’t find out what it was and what it offered.
Haroon Warsi, chairman of Dewa Nagar Palika, said that this building was constructed by Waris Ali Shah’s Hindu woman devotee Jamal Shah Mastani who came from Gwalior. “There are some rooms there where her followers stay and nothing else happens there,” he said on phone from Dewa.
Asked why this word Maikadah was used there, Warsi said the word is seemingly linked to ‘nasha’ of devotion. “His devotees are intoxicated under the great devotion and for them this is the Nasha.”
It will not be out of place to mention here that one can easily find some outlets selling chilled bear and countrymade liquor close to the shrine campus obviously to fulfill the requirements of the devotees. Liquor is not prohibited in UP like Bihar but it should not be allowed at least near the pilgrim sites by the local administration.
Mausoof Ahmed Khan, the descendants of a zamindar family in Mawai block in Ayodhya district, said in that building raised by Jamal Shah Mastani, qawwali sessions are held during the Urs of Waris Shah’s father Syed Qurban Ali Shah, whose mazar is located nearby. He said Waris Piya used to visit his ancestors.
Another landed gentry Munir Ahmad Khan of Anar Patti village talked about one big landlord Thakur Pancham Singh during the lifetime of Waris Ali Shah and was a great devotee. He said possibly the observance of Holi was started by him when the saint was alive and he approved it.
It is said that Holi is played in the shrine’s campus by both Hindus and Muslims with flower petals and yellow abir. They believe that non Muslims from the nearby villages would visit the saint when he was alive and sprinkle abir and petals at his feet on Holi day and he would bless them. This practice still continues and his followers from far flung areas come to play Holi.
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