Shree Samadhi Mandir, Shirdi

Shirdi is built around the samadhi (memorial shrine) of Sai Baba, a saint of uncertain and disputed origin who lived in the town from around the 1850s until his death on 15 October 1918, revered today by tens of millions of Hindus (and also by many Muslims) as a spiritual master and, to many devotees, a divine or avatar figure. Sai Baba’s own teaching and practice were explicitly syncretic rather than confined to one religion: he lived in a mosque he named ‘Dwarakamayi,’ observed both Hindu and Muslim ritual forms, and is recorded as having refused to identify exclusively with either tradition, treating Ishwar and Allah as paths to the same reality. His remains were interred at Shirdi’s Buti Wada, which grew into the present gold-adorned Samadhi Mandir housing an Italian-marble statue of the saint, now drawing an estimated 25,000 pilgrims a day, worshipped overwhelmingly according to Hindu ritual forms despite this syncretic origin.