RAWALPINDI, Dec 1: Pakistan is one of the few Muslim countries where Sufi tradition is alive in its popular manifestations. This was stated by a German scholar and head of Oriental Department at Museum of Ethnology Munich professor Wasim Trembgen while giving a lecture on ‘Sufi poster art’ at National College of Arts, Rawalpindi on Friday.

He said poster-portraits depicting saints and shrines are powerful devotional traditions in Muslim world that are shared by the common people.

Displayed at home or in shops, restaurants, hair-cutting saloons, offices and shrines, these poster-portraits create a sacred Islamic space making Sufiism apparent that bears testimony to the popular reverence for the ‘friends of God’ (aulia) in Pakistan, Dr Wasim elaborated.

He said that Sufi images that reflect the visual aesthetics of the folk art in which religious personalities and symbols are depicted are mass-produced in South Asia and are typical for the age of mass-communication, adding that they are distinctly urban and non-traditional medium of piety and devotion.

Portraits of saints are sacred objects in South Asia which are the continuity of classical miniature painting and their printing started in Bombay, Madras, Delhi, Lahore and Calcutta that shows the mutual influence between Islamic, Hindu and Sikh traditions, professor Wasim said.

The German scholar said that with the exception  of photographs and few actual painted portraits of saints, most of the sufi posters are imaginary and their composition mainly narrates the miracle stories or life history of the holy man. He called these posters as power-oriented designed to create personal charisma for the saints.

In Pakistan Sufi posters are mass-produced consumer items of the bazaar industry largely designed and printed in Lahore and as religious commodities they are mostly traded and sold at shrines in the Punjab and Sindh, particularly on annual festivals (urs, mela), Dr Wasim said adding that this popular folk art creates a unity of spiritual and aesthetic experience among the devotees.

The German scholar said that Sufi posters are medium of piety and devotion for the common people who also take them as support to ward off evil from the house and divert ‘evil eye’.

He said these posters are in great demand by the people at  great risk of misfortune, the poor and marginalised of the society.