Yet another origin story credits the name to a non-Brahmanical, non-Vedic cult that worshipped the sun and had built a water tank in the jungles of Bahraich for sun worship. This is according to Mirat-i-Masudi, a 17th-century hagiography of Syed Salar Masud or Ghazi Miyan, a mythical warrior-saint who is revered by Hindus and Muslims alike in Bahraich and large parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh. “The sun tank and the stone-engraved image of the sun (bala rich)- are in a jungle, and it is ‘this idol that had lent its name to the habitation Bahraich’. “The name Bala rich/rich appears to be a compound of Bala=sun, and rich= rish, from ‘rishi’, as in, the place-name ‘Satrikh’ (sapt-rikh = ‘abode of seven rishis’)”, writes historian Shahid Amin in his phenomenal work, Conquest and Community: The Afterlife of Warrior Saint Ghazi Miyan.

“The place has long been an object of pilgrimage, and a large fair takes place there, yearly in Jeth (summer months), attended by about 100,000 persons, many of whom are Hindus. The offerings are of several kinds. The first is known as 'Palang Perhi, or marriage offering, given by pilgrims from Rudauli, Benares, Jaunpur, and Mirzarpur...a very picturesque feature of the fair are the flags brought by pilgrims. The dargah is now financially well off and supports a school and a dispensary”, observed the 1901 District Gazetteer, Bahraich.

Myth-making

Intriguingly, Hindus, who seek boons and blessings at his grave in Bahraich, seem to remain unbothered by the myth: Syed Salar Masud has been memorialised as a bhanja or maternal nephew of Mahmud of Ghazni, that great despoiler of temples and a much-hated figure in the educated Hindu’s mind. The Ghazi Miyan story includes his tragic defeat and death at the hands of another mythical figure, king Suhel Deo or Suhel Dev in the forested terai region of Bahraich.

Nevill writes, “Suhal Deo was presumably a Bhar, he is also described as a Tharu, a Kalhans, a Bais or even a Jain; probably because all of these at one time or other held sway in different parts of the Gonda district (contiguous with Bahraich)”.

The present shrine of Ghazi Miyan is built over the grave that was dug at the same spot where he died from an arrow wound. Nevill writes, “Masud defeated them time after time until the arrival of Suhal Deo turned the tide of victory. Masud was overthrown and slain with all his followers on the 18th day of Rajab-ul-Murajab in 424 Hijri or 1034 A.D. He was buried by his servants in the spot which he had chosen for his resting place.”

War of narratives

With the explosion in Hindu majoritarianism over the last few decades, a conquest of narratives centred on these legendary figures has emerged. In 2002, the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party was launched in UP to galvanise the Rajbhar community, based on their demand for the Scheduled Caste (SC) status.

This was opposed by Rajputs — who claim Suheldev as one of their ancestors — and by the Pasis, a Dalit community. On a much wider scale, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has successfully portrayed Suhel Dev as a legendary Hindu king who pushed back the Muslim invader, Salar Masud.

Amish Tripathi, author of a fictional biography of Suhel Dev, has claimed, “I think he’s the most consequential hero in Indian history that we haven’t had before. He defeated the invading Turkic army, who were the world's military superpowers from the 11th to the 17th century. He inflicted such a devastating defeat on the Ghaznavid Turks that no Turkic army came back to India for nearly 150-160 years.”

Such imagined accounts are not new. Since the early 20th century Ghazi Miyan’s cult has been targeted by the Hindu nationalist press. “The Hindi pamphlets end the story of the Masud-Suhel encounter with the Ghazi's death. There is practically nothing here on the fate of Suhel Deo after his victory on the battlefield. In the Mirat, Masud appears in the dream of his lieutenant left behind at the base camp, with the instruction to first bury him along with the asp mada-i-khing (or his faithful mare Lilli and Sikandar Diwana — a bodyguard who accompanied Masud in all his battles and who was killed while holding Masud's slain body), and then to slay Sohal Deo. The next day's events turn out as prophesied: both Sohal Deo and Syed Ibrahim perish in mortal combat. The Hindi pamphlets skip this bit of the story, as if Sohal's life ends with the death of Masud and stopping the first Islamic invasion of Awadh”, observes Amin.

Since the 14th century, when Firoz Shah Tughlaq visited the grave and sponsored the material growth of the shrine, there are enough historical records that track the development of the cult of Ghazi Miyan or Bale Miyan as he is also known among his adherents.

“All manner of people carrying golden banners (alam: pennons/lances) come from distant lands to Bahraich'—a mart for trade with the produce of the hills-for pilgrimage, whereupon they hold lavish festivities and leave copious offerings in tribute”, according to Suraj Rai Bhandari’s 17th-century Persian chronicle Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh, that was completed during emperor Aurangzeb’s reign.

The various censuses held during the British period (1891, 1911) attest to the multi-religious and within Hindus, multi-caste congregation of the warrior saint. The 1891 Census Report of the United Provinces recorded over 1.5 million "special worshippers of Panchon Pir", or Panchpiriya, here referring to Ghazi Miyan and his four comrades. The Census commissioner said, “Even the Brahman makes his daily offerings of food and water to the spirits of the great [Ghazi] Pir and his associates, and for the low caste man the household worship of the five Pirs is in many districts his sole religious trust’.

“The 1911 Census put the ‘total population of the Hindu castes who worship[ped] these five saints’ at 13.5 million, laying stress on the fact that ‘of the 53 castes devoted to the Panchpiriyas in the province, 44 were ‘wholly or partly Hindus’, writes Amin.

As anthropologist Jack Planalp, however, notes during his fieldwork in Senapur (Jaunpur district-Varanasi division), within the first decade of independence the cult of Ghazi Miyan had suffered a decline with thakur landlords having successfully imposed a ban on the display of Miyan’s flag and relegated processions to only be taken out in the segregated ‘untouchable’ quarters. Despite this, some groups continued their close association with the legendary figure. Today’s India is seized by the self-destructive and fissiparous spirit that is leading to daily episodes of communal violence such as the one in Bahraich. From a liberal and complex past, we are facing the real prospect of being straitjacketed into our narrow identities. Bahraich’s Ghazi Miyan’s memorialisation as a warrior-saint and his one thousand-year-old multi-religious cult show us both the conflicts of the past and ways to co-exist in the present.

HistoriCity is a column by author Valay Singh that narrates the story of a city that is in the news, by going back to its documented history, mythology and archaeological digs. The views expressed are personal