Bitter lessons mar Dargah’s new chapter

‘‘We want to run a school of excellence for 800 students who will be drawn from every caste and creed,’’ explains a tired Syed Sarvar Chisti, secretary of the Anjuman Syedzadgan, an elected and registered body of the hereditary khadims of the holy shrine of sufi saint Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti. ‘‘Instead we are having to deal with name-calling by a bunch of people who openly say that the land should be given to anyone except Muslims.’’

Up in arms against the Gehlot government’s decision to give the AnjumanSyedzadgan 147 bighas of land for the school is a motley group of people, who have quickly organised themselves under the banner of the Shiv Shankar Samiti and say they draw their inspiration from the Shiv Sena.

‘‘The government cannot give these people land,’’ says Rajender Singh Rawat, in-charge of the Samiti.

‘‘The Anjuman committee has a bad history and their khadims are into smuggling and blackmailing. We don’t want them to create another madarsa that is a breeding ground for terrorists.’’

Spewing venom against the establishment of a school near Palra village, about 6 km from the dargah, Rawat says the government’s decision is illegal.

‘‘People have pucca houses on that land and the villagers also have grazing rights. How can the government ignore all that and not even ask the sarpanch before handing over the land to Muslims,’’ he asks.

As far as District Collector Niranjan Arya is concerned, the entire procedure was completely legal.

‘‘They want to open a school and the government has every right to give them that land,’’ he says.

‘‘And there is no question of that land being used for grazing. In fact it is rocky and nothing grows on it. We don’t see the reason for all the protests considering that there is 3000 bighas of vacant government land in the village.’’

Chisti is not perturbed by the legal debate over the land that has been handed over to them after they paid 10 per cent of the cost. What bothers him is the fact that the protesting villagers, who have also challenged the government decision in court, are openly objecting to Muslims being given the property.

‘‘There were no protests when the BJP gave land near Nairali to Jains to build a temple, school and gaushala during their tenure. In fact, they got the land free of cost whereas we paid Rs 22 lakh for ours. We are opening this school for everyone and are still being labelled as anti-national,’’ he says agitatedly.

‘‘And about our khadims being involved in smuggling or blackmailing, well we are taking action against them. A few bad men doesn’t mean all of us are bad.’’

Rawat is not convinced. ‘‘We are not going to give up without a fight. We also wanted land for a chatravas (hostel), why didn’t the government give us this land? We don’t trust the intentions of the khadims.’’

Chisti shakes his head in frustration.

‘‘We are already running a school where 80 per cent of the teachers are Hindus.

Yet we face these allegations.

We have a very distinguished board of directors, including filmmaker Muzzafar Ali and defence analyst Maroof Raza. This school will benefit so many, they don’t seem to understand that.’’

For the moment, the Ajmer court is hearing the arguments being made by the Shiv Shankar Samiti. However, the courts have quashed a plea asking for a stay on any work on the allotted land.

And the Anjuman trust is gearing up to get work started on the site at the earliest, braving threats of disruption by the Samiti and the Shiv Sena’s local unit.