ABSTRACT
This chapter foregrounds a case study of the Panj Pir shrine at Abohar, a frontier town along the Indo-Pak border. I argue that popular saint veneration transcends the narrow terrains of nation-state histories and exemplify the notion of sacred geography (wilayat) that interspaces sacred landscapes of medieval and modern India. The imagination of Panj Pir also coincides with various other notions of ‘five’ in the sacred geography of the region, thereby emerging as a popular idiom and memory of saint veneration. It is intriguing to note that the shrine has continued to attract pilgrims even after the ‘Muslim’ caretakers left for Pakistan. Problematizing the narrow definitions of the political economy of sacred spaces, I argue that continued veneration of shrines post-partition involves dialectic between the past and present. The new caretakers (who were partition migrants from Pakpattan) mediated themselves in the new nation-state both through the barkat of pirs as well as participation in relief during Indo-Pak wars. They legitimized their contemporary role through their place of migration in west Punjab that helps them mediate their claim to the shrine viz-a-viz Punjab Wakf Board.
