The Famous Sufi Saints of India.

There are four Sufi Saints who made huge difference in the social and cultural life and helped evolve Humanity.

1.     Moinuddin Chisti of Ajmer – came during rule of Prithviraj Chauhan .

2.    Qutabuddin Bakhtiar Kaki – Qutab Minar dedicated to Him and was close to Iltutmish of Slave Dynasty.

3.    Fariduddin Ganjshakar – development of Punjabi literature –more than 124 hymns composed by Him is included in Guru Granth Sahib by 5^th Sikh Guru Arjun.

4.     Nizamuddin Auliya -  He was spiritual master of Amir Khusrau & Nasiruddin Chirag –e – Delhi.

The common thing among these four famous Sufi Saints was that they formed the spiritual chain or “silsila” of the Chisti order in India, each successive person being disciple of the previous.

This was similar to the ten Sikh Gurus or the spiritual chain of Kriya Yogi’s of Mahaavatar Babaji or Ancient mystics known as Essenes –famous for “The Dead Sea Scrolls”.

The Sufi Saints stressed on love as a means for realizing God, love of God implied a love of humanity. They had a highly evolved sense of secularity and kindness. They brought about a paradigm shift towards worldly matters and people began to be inclined towards mysticism and prayers and remaining aloof from the world.

The Sufi Saints always promoted the local language and culture and believed in assimilation, mutual tolerance , quality of accommodation and to bring about cohesion of diverse people they promoted Qawwali music by which  listeners became so mesmerized that they started dancing a traditional religious dance called” Dhamaal”.

Sufi music serves as a basis of contact with people & facilitates mutual adjustment between communities. The Sufi poets Rumi, Hafiz, Bulleh Shah, Amir Khusrow and Khwaja Gulam are so popular that they continue to inspire Bollywood film music and are known as epitome of romantic songs.

The Sufi model of “Khanqah” was more like an ancient “Caravan Serai” as they were removed from the main city, had a “Baoli” or Stepwells – similar to a pond, the “Khanqah” was more like a spiritual retreat where people from all over the world came to meet the Spiritual Master, it usually has a mosque for prayers attached along with a “Madrasa” or School where children were imparted education . Feeding or “Langar” was very popular as the poor and hungry were always served with love and care.

Therefore by default the “Khanqah” became the focal point of social and community development – very much like our modern day Malls  - only difference being that Malls are more materialistic.

We can explore the life of the saints and the subtle methods used by them for social engineering and evolution and with appropriate adaptation they can be used to develop our complex society.