Talk:Hazrat Babajan

message: "through the Middle Eastern, in places such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Mecca" is not an improvement of a grammatical irregularity. Cott12 (talk) 22:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Moved these comments out of the talk page header. --nemonoman (talk) 12:40, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, welldone, thankyou. :Austerlitz (third-party) -- 88.72.0.172 (talk) 11:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: "Orphan" Comments

message: To give a general idea of some initial amendments that are probably necessary in order to include the differing published views, I provide an example below. I also feel the rest of the article could be improved, yet still retaining most of the current text. Again, are there any objections, or does anyone have a better suggestion?
Hazrat Babajan (c. 1806 – September 21 1931) was a Pathan (Pashtun) Muslim Sufi saint considered by her followers to be a sadguru or qutub. Born in either Afghanistan or Baluchistan (what is now Pakistan), she lived the final 25 years of her life in Pune, India.
Early life & realization
The earliest recorded account of Babajan, who was named at birth Gulrukh “Face like a Rose”, states that she “is the daughter of one of the ministers of the Amir of Afghanistan.”Purdom, Charles B: The Perfect Master, London: Williams & Northgate, 1937, p. 115, and referring to Meher Baba’s 1927 public discourse on Babajan, which had been recorded in a diary at the time (see http://www.ambppct.org/events/taverntalks/part130intrott.html) Later accounts report that Babajan “hails from Afghanistan … and was the daughter of a well-to-do Afghan of noble lineage”;Munsiff, Dr Abdul Ghani: “Hazrat Babajan of Poona”, Meher Baba Journal, Vol. 1, February 1939, No. 2, p. 31 “Her father was one of the chieftains of the Afghan empire”;Shepherd, Kevin R D: A Sufi Matriarch: Hazrat Babajan, Cambridge: Anthropographia Publications, 1986, p. 27 and more recently, “born to a royal Muslim family of Baluchistan”.Kalchuri, Bhau: Meher Prabhu: Lord Meher, The Biography of the Avatar of the Age Volume One, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Manifestation, Inc., 1986, p. 5 The precise date of Babajan’s birth is unclear. Biography variants range from 1790Purdom, Charles B: The God-Man: The Life, Journeys & Work of Meher Baba with an Interpretation of His Silence & Spiritual Teaching, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962, p. 18, who wrote, “her actual date of birth is not known; it is supposed to have been about 1790”. Kalchuri states Babajan to have been born "between 1790 and 1800" (Meher Prabhu: Vol One, p. 5), and Ghani considered the date to have been 1806, suggesting she was “125 years” when she died (Meher Baba Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 38) to c. 1820. Shepherd thinks it is “possible that she may have been born c. 1820 or even earlier” (A Sufi Matriarch, n. 16 p. 72), and Paul Brunton (Raphael Hirsch, or Hurst), quoting former judge Khandalawalla in 1931, wrote: “her age is really about ninety-five”, providing a possible later birth date of 1834 (A Search in Secret India, 1934, p. 62)
References
Stephen Castro 16:47, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I wasn't sure why you put her back in Pakistan. I took it from your other comments above that it was the Afghan Bolochistan and changed it to reflect that. I added in the material as you changed it. You can change it as you like. Dazedbythebell (talk) 19:22, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for adding the amendments.Yes, the Afghan Baluchistan, or near the border of. Stephen Castro 13:27, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed initial amendments to article

message: As I have some time off work today, please see below a proposed draft suggestion to replace the 2nd para for the “Early life & realization” section. I will go through the remaining sections in due course, and when time permits. I will seek consensus before making any changes.
Following the conventions of Afghan aristocracy, Babajan was reared under the strict purdah tradition, in which women were secluded from the outside world, and were also subservient to a custom of arranged marriages. She opposed an unwelcome marriage planned for her, and ran away from home on her wedding day at the age of eighteen. Disguised in her burqa, she journeyed to Peshwar, the frontier city at the foot of the Khyber Pass; nothing definite is known about her life until her subsequent move to Rawalpindi many years later. It was in or near that city she “lead an ascetic life for some years”Shepherd, A Sufi Matriarch, p. 38 and eventually came into contact with a Hindu sadguru. Following instruction from the guru, “she went into seclusion in a nearby mountain outside Rawalpindi and underwent very severe Riyaz (spiritual austerities) for nearly seventeen months. Thereafter she came down to [the] Punjab and stayed a few months in Multan. It was in Multan, while [Babajan] was 37 years of age, she contacted a Muslim saint … who put end to her spiritual struggle by giving her God-realisation”.Ghani, Meher Baba Journal, Vo. 1, No. 4, p. 32. Ghani does not name the Muslim saint, but Kalchuri states he was known as Maula Shah. This intense spiritual experience does not appear to have been an ultimate achievement. According to Meher Baba, she “became God Realized at the age of about sixty-five”, at the hands of another (unnamed) Master. (See http://www.ambppct.org/events/taverntalks/part130intrott.html) After that experience she returned to Rawalpindi to reconnect with the Hindu guru who, after several years, helped her return to normal consciousness.
Stephen Castro 12:03, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds fine. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking  or using four tildes (~~~~). Thanks. Dazedbythebell (talk) 16:02, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the opportunity to serve my apprenticeship on Wikipedia. I am learning as I go along, hence the numerous edits! I have actually been using the four tildes re the signature, but for whatever reason the talk page details did not appear, only my name. Anyhow, I will just cut and paste the one above. The ‘realization’ part of Babajan’s life is certainly the most complex section of the article, which is why I have included several references. The fact that Meher Baba communicated Babajan was around sixty-five before she attained full realization does not actually surprise me. I will doubtless need to return to those references if further clarification is required. C B Satpathy confirms Shepherd’s earlier suggestion that, during the years before Babajan moved on to Rawalpindi she may well have linked with Sufi communities or earned her livelihood doing the work of a servant in a shrine somewhere else. Certainly she must have had some Sufi influence or affiliation, though maybe not in any strictly orthodox sense. I feel the rest of the article just needs some additions and references, and perhaps a new section, “Final years”, in order to include journalist Paul Brunton’s meeting with Babajan – there are so few eyewitness accounts. Stephen Castro 16:08, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed further amendment

message: The idea of changing the infobox to a saint template is good. But some of the information changes are problematic. As the article clearly states the year of Babajan's birth is far from known, let alone certain. It is one of the most enigmatic aspects of her biography. Second she was not known by anyone as far as I know as "Saint Hazrat Babajan." Also the removal of her own master as an influence on her, and to say that she was influenced by her own disciple Meher Baba doesn't make a lot of sense. Dazedbythebell (talk) 18:50, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Infobox 

message: Apart from Hazrat Babajan's age discussion here I am very perplexed by her birthplace controversy here. During her her early life the later North West Frontier Province was indeed an eastern Afghanistan province and was not actually absorbed into British India until 1901 - it is the same region of NWFP of Pakistan that is now known as Pakhtunkhwa (since March 2010). So if Hazrat Babajan mentioned Afghanistan as her birthplace then it is very likely that she really is from the part that was eastern Afghnistan and included present day Balochistan. It should also be noted that present day Balochistan in Pakistan was part of that eastern Afghan province. So the editors should consult the geography that is contemporaneous with the early period of the subject's life and not that of the last hundred plus years. Moarrikh (talk) 16:10, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Place of Birth 

message: I deleted the section added by Danice thrall that was copied and pasted from Perfect Master (Meher Baba)#The Five Perfect Masters, an article on the teachings of Meher Baba. This is a teaching by Meher Baba, and does not belong in the Wikipedia article about Hazrat Babajan. Dazedbythebell (talk) 22:15, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Danice, I see you have chosen to put it back here, and on three other articles. This is useful information about what Meher Baba taught. And it is in the correct place in its own page on that subject. However to put Baba's teaching on the pages of other masters, with their own disciples, of different traditions, with different teachings, is simply to proselytize. It will not last in those articles, which are meant to be on the lives and teachings of those particular masters. So "spreading Baba's message" on other articles is not going to hold up on Wikipedia. Dazedbythebell (talk) 19:01, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "Five Perfect Masters"