Custodians of the Shrine, Masters of the Vote: Pirs and Sajjada Nashins in the Political History of Multan, 1970–1988

Abstract

In this article, the political behavior of five families with hereditary religious pedigree of Multan District including Gilani, Qureshi, Hashmi, Gardezi, and Bukhari is analyzed under the two radically different constitutional dispensations of populist democracy under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and military rule of Zia ul-Haq with a timeframe from 1970 to 1988. Using the typology of Max Weber of types of authority, it will be claimed that none of these families survived upon a single base of legitimacy. Their resilience was due to three factors acting simultaneously: traditional authority (inherited custodianship of shrines and lands), charismatic authority (personal following that mureeds give to a living pir), and legal rational authority (office based upon party affiliation, election or appointment). It turns out, as the case studies of these families against their long colonial genealogy of becoming landed-religious aristocracy demonstrate, that none of the regimes that succeeded during the period, regardless of its ideological break from the previous one, succeeded in breaking this multiple structure of authority.