Eknath Shinde has dug up a dargah dispute
Context:
- Recently, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde while addressing a religious event in Thane district took up the issue of Malanggad.
- The Shri Malanggad is more popularly known as the Haji Malang Dargah.
What is the Shrine and the related dispute?
- It is located on the lowest plateau of Malanggad, a hill fort 3,000 feet above sea level on the Matheran hill ranges.
- The Haji Malang Dargah is devoted by both Hindus and Muslims.
- On 20th February devotees will mark the death anniversary of Haji Abdul-Rahman who is a Sufi saint of the 12th century.
- The dargah is maintained a three-member trust which also includes a Hindu Brahmin family.
- Apart from the fact that the trust has had both Hindu and Muslim members and the shrine remains a dargah, Hindus continue to perform aarti on dargah premises on full moon day.
- The Supreme Court of India in 1954, in a case related to the control of the dargah within the Ketkar family observed that the dargah was a composite structure which cannot be governed either by Hindu or Muslim law but only by its own special customs or by general law of trusts.
- The first sign of communal strife over the shrine came in mid-1980s when Shiv Sena leader Anand Dighe started an agitation.
- He contested that the shrine belonged to Hindus as it was the site of a 700-year-old which is Machindranath temple.
- Also in 1996 he insisted on leading 20,000 Shiv Sainiks to the shrine to offer prayers.
- Since then that the structure has been called as Shri Malanggad.
