Hazrat Mujaddid Alif sani
Life History of Hazrat mujaddid alif sani
(1562-1624)
In the distant past, class glorifying ideologies were accepted by the masses because they believed the king and the elite had superior morals than those possessed by themselves. The Pharaohs were supposed to have superhuman powers, and for centuries thereafter every king came to be clothed, in the eyes of the people, with the robes of infallibility. At times even divine powers were attributed to the king and he was supposed to do no wrong. The kings of old were eulogised in epic poems and immortalised by magnificent monuments. The goal of state policy was to make the masses look upon the king as the source of all benevolent power, in order to win their blind loyalty and submission. And so the king was looked upon as the saviour of the nation and the dispenser of justice. Very often the king designed all his beliefs in the domains of morality and religion to suit his political ends. The king rationalised, beatified and justified all his actions by giving reasons, which would appear to be entirely devoid of any motive of selfishness. Thus, even when the intention of the king was malafide, the thunder of high-sounding moral justification was powerful enough to silence all opposition to the royal decree.
A general tendency is noticeable in the kings in that they have always sought to hold unlimited power over the lives and properties of their subjects. Under such circumstances, it was not possible for them to draw a moral dividing line between what was right and what was wrong. Pursuit of power was a habit, and like the habit of taking dope by a drug addict, this habit kept company with the king until his death. "Thus power intoxication marks a large portion of the top rulers of the political empires in ancient Egypt and Babylon, in ancient Rome and Greece." While the power of the king depended on his absolutism, the power of a community depended more on its beliefs than on its strength in numbers or in economic might. However, some kings desired to possess power as an end in itself and not as a means to achieving anything gloriously great for their peoples. Love - and lust for power in such cases never had any noble objective before it. "Love of power, like lust, is such a strong motive that it influences most men's actions more than it should".
Akbar, the Moghul Emperor, ruled over India from 1556 to 1605. It would be interesting to examine how his actions as a king were influenced and inspired by his pursuit in the realm of power-seeking. Babar, his grandfather, had invaded India in 1526, and he found that country divided into principalities and kingdoms, ruled by Hindu or Muslim princes. With his victory at Panipat in that year, he succeeded in ascending the throne at Delhi, and thus became the founder of the Moghul dynasty that continued to rule for over two hundred years. “While Humayun was flying through the desert of Sind to Persia, his son Akbar was born in the fort of Umerkot (1542)”. But, when Akbar was only fourteen, Humayun returned to India, and once again by defeating his enemies at Panipat in 1556, the Moghul dynasty came to be firmly entrenched in Delhi. Humayun died soon thereafter, to be succeeded by his son, Akbar, who was in every sense of the word the real founder of the Moghul Empire. Here was an empire set up by a Muslim dynasty in a country where the Muslim population was an insignificant minority, and the Hindus were the dominant majority comunity.
“The Muslim Empire in India was always faced with an inherent difficulty. It started as the rule of an alien people over a vast population which had its own traditions of religion, culture and philosophy. The ancient Hindu civilisation could not accept, without a struggle, a secondary position in its own habitat'' Believing that he must placate the Hindus at all costs, if his dynasty was to be perpetuated as the rulers of India. Akbar embarked upon a state policy of compromise with and pacification of the Hindus. Possibly, he felt that religion was the main dividing line between his Hindu and Muslim subjects, and he believed that if he could eliminate that "great divide", he would succeed in eliminating the main cause of separation of his peoples, and that thereafter he would receive their united support. Already “Laxity and heterodoxy had grown in volume towards the end of the rule of the Lodis (1526)". When Akbar came to the throne, he was devoted to orthodox Islamic beliefs and was sympathetic and friendly to the Muslim theologians. But he gradually sacrificed orthodox beliefs at the altar of statecraft and in the interests of perpetuating his own personal power, he married a Hindu Rajput princess, and later on his son's marriage also took place with another Rajput princess, who came to occupy positions of power in the ruling hierarchy. While Akbar gained the support of the Hindus and Rajputs, the State began to gradually lose its Muslim character and basis. “Akbar's attempt to broaden the base of the Empire was fraught with far-reaching consequences. It set it on the inevitable course of being converted into a non-Muslim State".
Young in years, Akbar found he had unlimited powers in his hands. As may be expected under such circumstances, his subjects loaded him with flattery, the refrain of which was that the Emperor was endowed with "spiritual powers and was a man of destiny". Constant flattery, like oft-repeated lies, has a knack of finding ready acceptance, and so it was in the case of Akbar. Flattery is always delectable, and he began to readily believe what the flatterers said. “A man whom Future has favoured as it had Akbar easily falls into the fallacy that his success has a higher purpose which destiny is unfolding in new ways, especially when it is being constantly suggested to him by so many wise men. If he sees that learned men abjectly recognise him as the superior intellect, it is difficult for him to maintain his balance. Here was an ideal instrument for subverting the position of orthodoxy in the land, if only it could be won over. The times were propitious for such an endeavour because the beliefs of the rank and file among the Muslims had already been corroded by extraneous Influences and doctrines which would present any sharp reaction . On their part. Akbar's turning away from orthodoxy was a slow and gradual process in the beginning, but having once started, it continued to gain momentum".Akbar also realised that so long as orthodoxy had authority over the affairs of state, his own authority would have to be circumscribed by what the law of Islam dictated. This, he felt, was a crippling restriction on his powers, and he thirsted for unlimited power.
Akbar had a Hall of Worship built where he would gather leaders of different faiths in order to hold theological discussions. He found that these religious scholars hardly ever agreed among themselves on matters connected with religion and religious belief. “Akbar was the ruler of an empire inhabited by men of diverse faiths; therefore he must set himself up as the teacher of men of different religions .... There was no difficulty in his becoming a spiritual guide and, therefore, he started an order called by the name of the Divine Faith and "Divine Monotheism". It was not difficult to find converts to his state religion, “based upon natural theology, and comprising the best practices of all known forms of belief. Of this made-up creed, Akbar was the prophet, or rather the head of the church". Akbar felt himself imbued with a "sense of superhuman omnipotence which is bred of despotic imperial power.
The courtiers and flatterers surrounding Akbar made him seriously believe that, being the Emperor, he had every right to lay down the law for his people, in all walks of life, including religion. “The real Saint”, Baudelaire writes, “is he who flogs and kills people for their own good”. Akbar looked upon himself as if he were a sort of a saint, whose duty it was to force his people to accept his experimental beliefs in the realm of religion, as if they were divinely ordained laws and beliefs. His peoples prostrated themselves before his religious beliefs, just as they were prepared to prostrate themselves before his person, as they considered him to be the embodiment of all worldly power, a power that held the life and death of his peoples in the hollow of his palm. - Akbar brought into being the fable of Deen-e-llahi in order to give himself the illusion of having won immortality in his own lifetime. “Akbar seems to have believed that his understanding of Islam was more rational than that of the theologians with whom he differed".
The founding of the Divine Faith had completed the first phase of Akbar's dream of setting himself up as a super-human being, who must naturally wield absolute authority over his subjects. Now followed a number of royal decrees, which left orthodox Muslims gaping with wonder as to where it would all end. “They felt that Islam was undone in India”. Some of his innovations and orders appear today to be too presumptuous and ludicrous to be true, but Mulla Abdul Qadir Badayuni, who was a contemporary of Akbar and a historian, has given us in his book, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, a graphic account of Akbar's royal decrees in order to spread his Divine Faith. According to Mulla Badayuni, Akbar surrounded himself with those people who were ready to accept all his teachings without question, and those who did not believe in revelation and in any religious code. “To believe in revelation was considered as Taqlid or following authority blindly a low kind of morality and fit only for the uneducated and the illiterate".
Akbar went further, "He openly opposed Islam and regarded the injunctions of Islam as temporary and irrational .... So many wretches of Hindus and Hinduised Muslims brought unmitigated revilings on the Prophet; and the villainously irreligious Ulema in their works pronounced the Emperor to be infallible and contented themselves with maintaining the unity of God, they next mentioned the various titles of the Emperor, and did not have the courage to mention the name of the Prophet (God be gracious to him and to his followers, and give them peace in defiance of the liars) ..... Besides this the mean people of the higher and lower classes .....professed themselves to be his disciples". It can well be imagined what a shock this must have given to orthodox Muslime in India. "The Emperor had ceased to believe in the Quran he did not believe in life after death, nor in the Day of Judgement". This shows how far Akbar had deviated from Islam and he wanted other Muslims to follow his example. “Wine was declared lawful, and bacon was made an ingredient of wine; Jizyah or the military tax was abolished and beef was declared unlawful...... The Salat or the prescribed prayers. the Saum or the prescribed fasts and the Haj or pilgrimage to Mecca were abolished". Akbar abolished the Islamic calendar, and substituted it by giving his own calendar. "Islam after a thousand years was considered to have played itself out; the study of Arabic was looked upon as if it were something unlawful; the Law of Islam or Fiqh, Tafsir or the exegesis of the Quran and Hadith or the traditions of the Prophet were ridiculed; and those who prosecuted those studies were looked down as deserving of contempt".
As these antiIslamic measures came to be propounded, one by one, they deeply hurt the feelings and religious sentiments of orthodox Muslims. "The Adhan or call to prayers and the Namaz-iJamat or congregational prayers which used to be, as prescribed by Islam, offered five times a day in the State hall were stopped". It seemed, according to Mulla Badayuni, as if Akbar had undertaken the responsibility of completely undermining the teachings of Islam. "Such names as Ahmad, Muhamad and Mustafa, the various names of the Prophet of God, had become offensive to the Emperor, and to utter them was a crime. Mosques and prayer rooms were changed into store-rooms and into Hindu guard-rooms": Muslims were faced with a critical situation, being confronted with an assault on their orthodox religious views. The danger was not only from the fact that this king held opinions dangerous to their Faith as Muslims, it was supplemented by the fact that Akbar's heterodoxy was being accepted by large sections of the Muslims themselves. The situation needed a bold and daring champion to defend the cause of Islam. "Thus the times cried for the appearance of a great reformer.
This crying need was fulfilled, when a fearless reformer unfolded the banner of revolt against Akbar's heterodoxy. His name at the time of his birth was Shaikh Ahmed, but who by his devotion to the cause of Islam at a difficult period of its history in the subcontinent, is known as Shaikh Ahmed AlFaruqui Sirhindi, Imam-e-Rabbani, Mujaddid-i-Alf-l-Thani. "The Mujaddid boldly opposed all plans to bring Islam and Hinduism together on the religious level which could not but loosen the Muslim grip on the sources of imperial strength. He clearly enunciated that Islam and Kufr were two different entities which could not be fused together",1 The Mujaddid's life and work were the outward manifestations of the intense inner moral and religious urge and fervour within himself. The result was that his teachings came to seep gradually into the consciousness of the Muslims, which kindled in them a burning desire to live their lives in conformity with the tenets of Islam. Almost midway between Delhi and Lahore is a place called Sirhind, which was about six hundred years ago a wild forest, where tigers and other wild animals abounded. In the days of Firoz Shah Tughlaq (A, D, 1351), through this dense and dangerous forest a caravan carrying with it the royal treasury was on its way to Delhi, protected on its two flanks by the royal guards.
One of the members of this caravan, travelling with the royal treasury was a saintly person, Sahib-i-Kashf. When the caravan reached the exact spot where Sirhind is now, he had an intuitive realisation that a very great saint would be born in that place. When the caravan reached its destination, and the saint's premonition was conveyed to Firoz Shah Tughlaq, he immediately ordered that the forest be cut down and the foundations laid to build a city there. He entrusted the work to Imam Rafiuddin. "Imam Rafiuddin was the sixth ancestor of the Mujaddid..... While the construction was in progress, Shah Bu Ali Qalandar came and helped in it, and informed Imam Rafluddin that the great saint of the prophecy would be his descendant". After Sirhind was built, Imam Rafiuddin was entrusted with the management of the town by the King, and since then the family of the Imam came to be settled in Sirhind. From now on they acquired the family name of Sirhindi.
In the Sirhindi family was born Shaikh Abdul Ahad, who was the father of the Mujaddid. Shaikh Abdul Ahad spent the best part of his childhood and youth in serious and devoted studies, particularly in studying the Quran and Hadith. On becoming a disciple of that great mystic and scholar, Shaikh Abdul Qudoos Gungohi, he was initiated by his teacher into the Qadriya and Chishtiya schools of sufism. Shaikh Abdul Ahad came to be married to the daughter of a great scholar of Bulandsher. Both husband and wife were extremely pious people, devoted to their studies and to propagating Islam. They were a happy and contented couple, and seven sons were born to them, the fourth of whom was Shaikh Ahmad, the Mujaddid.
It is said that a little before the birth of the Mujaddid, his father saw in a dream that the entire world was drowned in darkness, when suddenly out of his breast there leapt forth a powerful light. He then saw a throne, floating in the air, on which was seated a saintly person. Shaikh Abdul Ahad related the story of this dream to Hazrat Shah Kamal, who interpreted the dream to mean that a son would be born to Shaikh Abdul Ahad, who would become a great saint and Mujaddid. Shaikh Ahmed was born in Sirhind on Friday, the 14th of Shawwal (971 A.H)., equivalent to A.D. (1562). At the age of four. his parents had him admitted to a muktab, where he was able to learn the Quran by heart within a short time. He had an irrepressible passion for learning, and at a very young age he was able to impress those that met him with his profound knowledge about various branches of learning. His thirst for knowledge took him outside his native Sirhind and he travelled far in those days of difficult transportation and communication, in order to learn from renowned Muslim scholars of the time subjects such as Hadith, Tafsir, and Philosophy.
In his constant travels in his pursuit of knowledge. Shaikh Ahmad once visited Agra, which was at the time the capital and where Akbar and his ministers lived. The news of the arrival in Agra of a famous scholar spread fast and wide, and Akbar's two trusted ministers, the brothers Abul Fadl and Faidi, anxious to meet such a great person, came to the house of Shaikh Ahmad in order to pay their respects to him. The two brothers were greatly impressed by his undoubted mastery over various branches of learning, and they invited him to stay in their house as their guest for three days. It was a unique honour, as Abul Fadl and Faidi stood very close to the Emperor Akbar.
In the days that followed the three were constantly together. One day as Shaikh Ahmad came to visit Faidi in his house, he found Faidi, wearing a worried look, busy writing. On seeing Shaikh Ahmad, Faidi felt relieved. Explaining the reason of his anxiety, Faidi said that he was busy writing his Tafsir-i-Bi-Nuqat, which was a commentary on the Quran, no letter of which contained a dot, and that he had come across an Aiyat, which was very difficult to comment upon, using letters in Arabic without a dot. Shaikh Ahmad was asked to try his hand at it. He agreed, and to the great surprise and amazement of Faidi, Shaikh Ahmad succeeded in producing within a short time the necessary commentary in chaste Arabic without using a single letter with a dot. "However, this friendship did not last very long, because the Shaikh took serious offence to Abul Fadl's anti-Islamic attitude".
Shaikh Ahmad had been away for a long time, and his father was anxious to meet his son. The father came to Agra, and the father and son soon returned to Sirhind. He was now taking lessons from his father in the Qadriya and Suhrawardiya schools of sufism and in other branches of religious learning. Under the guidance of his father, he took to severe mystic discipline. Shaikh Abdul Ahad was nearing eighty, and with the passage of years, his love for his favourite son Shaikh Ahmad had increased. The father, however, died in, (1007 A.H). and was buried in Sirhind The Shaikh, plunged in grief, thought of making a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca. The following year he left Sirhind for Delhi on his way to perform the Haj, where he met and came under the influence of Khwaja Baqi Billah, who conferred on him the Khilafat of the Naqshbandiya Order.
On his return to Sirhind, the Shaikh spent most of his time in prayer and in spreading the teachings of Islam among those that came to study under him. There the news of the death of Khwaja Baqi Billah reached him, which laid him prostrate with grief. After some time he left Sirhind for Lahore, in order to continue his mission of preaching Islam in that city, From Lahore, once again he returnd to Sirhind. His wide travels and personal contacts with Muslims in different parts of India had convinced him that under the auspices of royal commands many un-Islamic practices and beliefs were taking deep root in Muslim minds. His mind had been slowly awakening to the realisation that the times needed the emergence of a bold reformer, who would dare to defty the royal orders and so prevent any assault on the religious beliefs of the Muslims.
He was convinced that if things were allowed to drift without check or protest, the task would become more and more difficult. “Further, the Ulema or theologians had taken exclusively to Fiqh or jurisprudence as the whole of religious learning; they had ceased to refer to the Quran and Hadith as the genuine sources of Islam. Consequently the juristic view of Islam was alive, the spirit of Islam had died ..... They could be induced to give Fatwa or decision of the sacred law, permitting the Haram or the prohibited and prohibiting the Halal or the permitted. Makhdum-ul-Mulk is said to have given a Fatwa that the ordinance of Hajj or Pilgrimage was no longer binding, that it had rather become injurious". In the face of such difficult conditions, the Mujaddid raised the banner of revolt, and as his teachings were contrary, to and directed against, the un-Islamic edicts of Akbar,' he invited upon himself the wrath and fury of the Emperor. But he was a devoted and dedicated man, ready to sacrifice his all in order to preserve and save Islam.
While in Agra, which was at that time known as Akbarabad: the Mujaddid sent a message to the Emperor that he should give up his preachings, which were definitely anti-Islamic and un-Islamic. "Your empire, your power, your army-all these will vanish one day. Prostrate yourself before God. Ask His forgiveness. If you don't do this, then await the retribution of God" Akbar, in spite of this warning, continued in his crusade to make his own conception of religion more and more popular among the princes and the people. On the death of Akbar, he was succeeded by his son Jehangir, who continued to follow in the footsteps of his father in religious matters. On the other hand, the Mujaddid continued to oppose these beliefs, sought to be popularised under royal patronage. He insisted that his followers should not obey orders, from whomsoever they came, if they were contrary to Islam. The courtiers and flatterers began to pour poison into Jehangir's ears, respectfully sounding warnings that the Mujaddid was opposed to Jehangir and that he must be stopped from preaching against the King. Jehangir had the Mujaddid summoned to his court, and the two had a free and frank discussion, which convinced Jehangir that the Mujaddid had nothing personal against the King.
This annoyed those hanging around the court, and from now on they began to spread alarmist rumours that the Mujaddid's movement was a political one, and if it was not nipped in the bud, it would result in the dethronement of Jehangir. They said that the fact that hundreds of Government officials, holding important posts, were the followers of the Mujaddid was enough indication that the Mujaddid was creating a powerful front against the King, and he would ultimately throw Jehangir out of power. Asaf Jah, one of the ministers of Jehangir, was among those who supported this analysis as being sound and correct, and persuaded the King to take action against the Mujaddid. Jehangir thought it better to be guided by prudence and not to ignore such ominous warnings, and he transferred or degraded many officers who were known to be leaning towards the Mujaddid. Once again, Jehangir had the Mujaddid summoned Into his presence, and he was asked to prostrate himself before the King, as was the custom. This was in the year 1618. The Mujaddid was not to be daunted by royal displeasure, and in a firm voice he replied, "I prostrate myself before none, but God. He is the only one worthy of prostration. The King himself is like me, a mere man, and he must also prostrate.
himself before God". Commenting on the incident. Allma Iqbal in one of his poems has said :
Gardan Na jhuki jiski Jehangir Ke Aagey
(Before Jehangir he did remonstrate
Before none but God would he himself prostrate).
Jehangir, who was accustomed to implicit obedience, was annoyed at what he thought was an affront to him by the Mujaddid in the presence of so many people. A royal decree was issued sentencing the Mujaddid to imprisonment, and he was sent as a prisoner to Gwalior State. There was some talk among his followers to stage a political revolt against Jehangir. But on coming to know of such attempts, the Mujaddid wrote from his prison cell to his followers that his was not a political mission. He was a religious reformer, and the rigours of jail life have no effect on him, who is wedded to a noble cause. A time will come, he wrote, when he would be freed from jail.
The Mujaddid continued to dream of his mission and of his ultimate victory. In prison, the dreams of the Mujaddid were not circumscribed by geographical limitations of prison walls, nor was the reality of prison-life a deterrent on the free exercise of his mind. Everything conceived in the solitude between prison walls generates a powerful inner conviction, which finds an outlet in the exercise of a dominant will to live a life in accordance with that conviction. The Mujaddid continued to be confined in Ujjain prison for two years, at the end of which Jehangir began to be convinced that the Mujaddid was merely actuated by his zeal for religious reform, and there was nothing political in his movement. The Mujaddid's imprisonment hurt the feelings of Mahabat Khan, the Governor of Kabul, who invaded India. At Jhelum, Mahabat Khan's army came face to face with Jehangir's army, and the Emperor was taken prisoner.
The Mujaddid sent instructions from the jail to Mahabat Khan to set the Emperor free, and Mahabat Khan immediately obeyed the orders of the Mujaddid. Thereafter, Jehangir ordered the Mujaddid to be freed, and at the same time sent a request to the Mujaddid to come and stay for some time with Jehangir as his personal guest. The Mujaddid put certain conditions, which Jehangir must accept and implement, before the Mujaddid could consent. The Emperor accepted all these conditions, one of which was that no one would prostrate himself before the King. The Mujaddid was once again in the royal presence, and once again he did not prostrate himself before Jehangir. But the Emperor was now in a chastened mood. He appreciated the reasoning behind the Mujaddid's action. A close attachment began to grow in Jehangir's mind towards the Mujaddid, who remained with the King for eight years, during which time he tried his best to see that Jehangir gave up those teachings which were against the tenets of Islam. The Mujaddid's following grew by leaps and bounds, and it is said that Jehangir's son, Prince Khurram, who later became the Emperor Shah Jehan, also became a disciple of the Mujaddid. "The Mujaddid brought the Islamic kingdom of India back to Islam...... He induced the divines of Islam to the study of the Quran and Hadith, which they had neglected so long...... He established that the Din or religion and so not tasawuf or mysticism is the indispensable thing for a Muslim”.
Of middle height, the Mujaddid had a magnetic and imposing personality. He was a man of delicate and sensitive nature, and when face to face with him, one could not but be convinced that he was a man of culture and refinement. Of brownish complexion, he had a big pair of eyes that eloquently spoke of his extremely spiritual nature. He is said to have had large hands, but thin and elongated fingers. He used to be always dressed in very simple clothes--a long white kurta, and a white shalwar; a huge white turban always adorned his head. He was a prolific writer on religion and mysticism. More famous of his works are his epistles, of which he wrote over six hundred. These letters are addressed to different persons, at different periods of his life, and they cover a wide range of subjects.
The Mujaddid found the theory of Wahdat-i-Wujud largely accepted by the Mulims of his time. Advancing by stages to the pinnacle of sufism, he rejected Wahdat-i- Wujud, the rejection being based on his own personal experiences as a sufi. At first he himself believed in this theory, and for a long time he continued to adhere to it. “Afterwards a new kind of spiritual experience took hold of his soul, and he found that he could hold Wahdat-i-Wujud no longer..... At last he had to reject it definitely, and it was revealed to him that Wahdat-i-Wujud was a lower stage and that he had arrived at a higher stage, namely, Zilliyat or adumberation... ... Then the grace of God took him higher up to the highest stage, namely, Abdiyat or servitude. Then he realised that Abdiyat or servitude is very high above all other stages". Like a true sufi, the Mujaddid evolved from being a man of the world to becoming a God-intoxicated person.
“There is no exaggeration in the statement that it was through his influence that Islamic mysticism increasingly became a supporter of orthodoxy..... The Shaikh's influence spread into Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Ottoman Empire in the West and Malaya and Indonesia in the East". The final stage of Abdiyat had made him free from bondage to everything except Allah. “The relation between man and God is, according to the Mujaddid, that of Abd and Ma'bud or the
worshipper and the worshipped": The vigorous advocacy of his doctrines won the Mujaddid many followers, and he had won for himself an immortal place among the great religious reformers of the world of Islam. "The call of the Mujaddid to all Musalmans and Islamic mystics is 'away from Plotinus and his host and back to Muhammad."
The Mujaddid was now 63. After saying his Idu-Zuha prayers, he came home, lay in his bed and said, “My time is drawing near. I must depart on my last journey". Besides others, his children, seven sons and three daughters, were near him. He began to exhort them that even after his death they should continue to pass their lives on the true Path of Islam; that they should fear only God, and no other power.
A long and hard life spread over a number of years devoted to religious reforms had weakened his constitution. He was utterly exhausted physically. It was Tuesday, the 29th of November, 1624. The Mujaddid was experiencing great difficulty in breathing. He asked those near him to lay him on the ground, his head being in the direction of the Kaaba. He closed his eyes and was soon lost in prayer. His breathing became heavy and more and more difficult. On his lips was the name of God. Peacefully he passed away that day, leaving behind him a deathless legend-a legend of dedication to the cause of Islam.
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