Drawing a Line in Water

Our visit to the dargah (tomb) of the Sufi saint, Nizamuddin Auliya, in Delhi was one of the highlights of the trip for me.  As a scholar of popular Hinduism, our journey into the labyrinthine alleys that lead to the tomb was a trip into another of India's remarkable religious worlds, one that I had only read about it in books.   Dargahs are well-known as sites of religious syncretism in the subcontinent, open to people of many faiths.  It could have been places like this that prompted the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh (1615-1659) to answer, when asked to demarcate the differences between religions, "How can you draw a line in water?" Here, everyone who seeks inspiration can come sit in the presence of the deceased saint's baraka (the healing, empowering divine force that flows from God through those closest to Him).