At the height of the communal troubles in 1992-3, Ajmer's main bazaar, which runs in a straight line from Delhi Gate to the front entrance of the Dargah, was widened by the army to ensure easier access for its troops. All over the country, Hindus and Muslims were on the rampage, and this devout Islamic enclave was considered a prime flashpoint. The expected blood bath, however, never happened. While most of northern India suffered the worst communal unrest since Partition, Ajmer's curfew held firm. No one had any doubt that peace prevailed because of the enduring influence of the Sufi saint enshrined at the heart of the city, Khwaja Muin-ud-din Chishti.
Born in 1156, in Afghanistan, Muslim India's most revered saint, also known as Khwaja Sahib or Garib Nawaz, began his religious career at the age of 13, when he distributed his inheritance among the poor and adopted the simple, pious life of an itinerant Shia fakir (the equivalent of the Hindu sadhu ). Wandering between the madrasas of Persia and Samarkand, he soaked up the teachings of the great Central Asian Sufis, whose emphasis on mysticism, ecstatic states and pure devotion as a path to God were revolutionizing Islam during this period.
By the time he came to India with the invading Afghan armies at the end of the twelfth century, Khwaja Sahib had already established a following of his own. But his reputation as a divinely inspired prophet really snowballed after he and his disciples settled in Ajmer, while the holy man was in his fifties. Withdrawing into a life of meditation and fasting, he preached a message of renunciation, affirming that personal experience of God was attainable to anyone who relinquished their ties to the world with an open heart. More radically, he also insisted on the fundamental unity of all religions: mosques and temples, he asserted, were merely material manifestations of a single divinity, with which all men and women could commune.
In this way, Khwaja Sahib became one of the first religious figures to bridge the gap between India's two great faiths. With its wandering holy men, emphasis of mysticism and miracles, and devotional worship involving music, dance and states of trance, Sufism would have been intelligible to many Hindus. Moreover, it readily absorbed and integrated aspects of Hindu worship into its own beliefs and rituals. After Khwaja Sahib died at the age of 97, his followers lauded the Bhagavad Gita as a sacred text, and even encouraged Hindu devotees to pray using names of God familiar to them, equating Ram with "Rahman", the Merciful Aspect of Allah.
The spirit of acceptance and unity central to the founder of the Chishti order's teachings explains why his shrine in Ajmer continues to be loved by adherents of all faiths. Nor does it seem to matter that the tomb was probably erected over the ruins of a Hindu temple. This is one sacred site in India where the rantings of right-wing Hindu extremists are drowned out by a more inclusive, ecstatic kind of religious fervour
