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Country: Pakistan
Location: National Pilmirage Shrine
Mariam Abad, Mariam Abad Chak # no 3, Tehsil Safderabad District Sheikhupura , Punjab, Pakistan
Type of Religious site: Catholic Church and National Shrine
Religious communities attending: Punjabi Christians, Muslims, Hindus
No of communities attending more than two
Language(s) used for ceremonies and prayers: Punjabi, Urdu
Pilgrimage location: yes
Pilgrimage season: A three-day annual pilgrimage and mela is held yearly around September First Friday Saturday and Sunday to celebrate the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. The shrine also attracts visitors during Lent. Established by Belgian Capuchins in the late nineteenth century, the small village of Mariam Abad is located in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The site under study is composed of the village itself — about 300 houses — and its large religious complex, which includes a church, a mango orchard and a grotto topped by a statue of the Virgin Mary. Since the 1950s, this Catholic village has become a center of pilgrimage. With growing intensity since the 1990s, thousands of pilgrims walk or cycle over great distances every year to celebrate the nativity of the Virgin Mary in Mariam Abad. Known as Ziarat-e-Muqqadas Mariam, this grueling yet playful ritual is presumably the largest Christian congregation in the country and culminates with a three-day mela or festival held around the National Pilmirage Shrine Mariam Abad. National Pilmirage Shrine Mariam Abad started at 1893(1949). this is our National Shrine in Pakistan
Most participants are working-class Punjabi Christians, who are descendants of ‘Chuhran’ untouchable castes converted to Christianity during the first half of the twentieth century. Concerned that recently converted Christians could relapse into heresy, Belgian missionaries designed the shrine and its pilgrimage as a Christian alternative to local Muslim village festivals. But boundaries are porous, and the language of ritual practice deployed in this site mirrors that of Muslim dargahs and Hindu yatras. This allows for a wide participation of Protestants, Muslims and Hindus seeking the Virgin’s blessings in relation to specific vows. As a result, critics often describe this site and its ritual as being excessively Islamized, or as a superficial recasting of Hinduism bordering idolatry. Rather than signaling a syncretic encounter, this ‘shared sacred site’ needs to be analyzed with reference to the specific articulation between caste and religious identity in Punjab, and to the changing trajectories of social mobility among marginalized Punjabi Christians in Pakistan.
