It has been one of the rarest symbols of religious harmony, almost a believe-it-or-not place. A shrine that attracts both Hindus and Muslims, believed to be the final resting place of a saint revered by people from both communities. But it may not remain that way for long if Hindutva activists have their way in what essentially is an attempt to bolster their rather weak presence in India´s south.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the even more radical Bajrang Dal (BD) contend that the Swami Dattatreya Baba Budhan Giri dargah in Chikmagalur in Karnataka state, some 300 km north-west of Bangalore, regarded as one of the oldest Sufi shrines in the region, ought to be a Hindu-only temple. The campaign began in the early 1990s, picked up steam in 1998, and flared up following the death in October 1999 of the custodian of the shrine, Pir Sayyed Muhammad Shah Qadri Qalandar.
The Hindutva activists want the Sufi priest´s body to be exhumed from the dargah premises, where his relatives and ancestors lie buried, and have demanded that his son, Sayyed Muhammad Ghaus, be barred from customarily succeeding him to the position of Sajjada Nashin. For the dargah´s Hindu and Muslim worshippers, this goes against the whole philosophy of co existence and harmony that the shrine symbolises, as its very name so strikingly reveals — Sri Dattatreya Swami Baba Budhan Dargah.
Muslims believe that the founder of the cave-shrine, an Arabian Sufi called Dada Hayat, is one of their own, while Hindus take him to be the incarnation of their god Dattatreya (see box overleaf). In any case, the dargah being a Sufi shrine, it would be open to worship by people of all faiths. None of the available royal records show any Hindu ruler of the area to have had problems with the shrine being tended to by the family of Muslim Sajjada Nashins. Indeed, Hindu royalty had recognised them as Mathadipathis (Heads of the Shrine), and also by the honorific of Sri Dattatreya Swami Baba Budhan Swami Jagadguru. They were also given certain privileges at par with the heads of some leading Hindu shrines. In the erstwhile Hindu kingdom of Mysore, the Sajjade Sri Guru Dattathreya Baba Budhan Swami was among 17 ´gurus´ to have been exempted from appear ing in the civil courts, the only Muslim priest to enjoy that honour.