The Mujawars of Sakhi Sarwar

The small and dusty town of Sakhi Sarwar on the tribal border of the Punjab has, for many centuries, primarily relied on income from pilgrims visiting the shrine after which it is named. Mujawar families have acted as both shrine caretakers and pilgrim hosts in a tradition passed down through the generations: most Mujawars have an association with particular pilgrim families from the region and further afield, and at the annual Urs festival they provide lodging and food. This association is typically continued from one generation to the next, strengthening familial ties and economic security over time. However, in the early 2000’s the Auqaf Department claimed Sakhi Sarwar shrine as being Waqf property and subsequently introduced strict regulations, including limiting pilgrim lodging to Auqaf-owned hostels only and managing all shrine activities, incomes and maintenance. As a result, the Mujawar familes lost both their source of income and their historic identity which was so closely linked to that of the shrine they cared for.

Non-Mujawar familes had previously migrated into the settlement and had largely monopolised most non-shrine related businesses, including shops and small industries. As a result, when the Mujawars were so suddenly cut off from their traditional income sources and started to economically diversify out of necessity, the only remaining available jobs tended to be as low-paid, unskilled daily wage labourers. The vast majority of such jobs are on the stone-crushing plants dotted along the main roads in the area, where larger stone blocks quarried in the nearby hills and river boulders first have to be manually broken by hand into more manageable sizes, before being mechanically crushed into graded aggregates. Older Mujawar men like the one pictured now find themselves working long hours in the open sun, simply to make ends meet.