By
Chintan Girish Modi
You might remember the time when Ali Amin Gandapur, who is Pakistan’s Minister for Kashmir Affairs
and Gilgit Baltistan, said, "If tensions with India
rise on Kashmir, Pakistan will be compelled to go to war. Those countries
backing India and not Pakistan (over Kashmir) will be considered our enemy and
a missile will be fired at India and those nations supporting it."
This
was around the time when India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and National
Security Advisor Ajit Doval met with a delegation of members from
the European Parliament to win support for India’s mandate against terrorism
backed by Pakistan, while also trying to cover up India’s brutal clampdown on
the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination.
As
long as India and Pakistan continue to treat Kashmir as their battleground,
peace will mean nothing but a dream to most Kashmiris. On the other hand I have
the privilege of sitting in Mumbai, and churning out these words as an
expression of my solidarity. I wonder if it means anything to the people who
have been caught in the crossfire between two nation states asserting their
military might, and threatening to use their nuclear capabilities.
Silence
is not an option when I know that it means being complicit. I hope. I pray. I
write. I seek refuge, or escape -- see it as you wish -- in the verse of Shah
Abdul Latif Bhitai (1689-1752), a Sindhi Sufi poet who composed the poetic
compendium Shah Jo Risalo. Bhitai’s
poems have been translated most recently by Shabnam Virmani and Vipul Rikhi in
their book, I Saw Myself: Journeys with
Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, which includes extensive commentary on the oral
traditions that keep this poetry alive. The book was published by Penguin
Random House India in 2019.
The
authors write, “The border between India and Pakistan
partitioned a vibrant and immense cultural and poetic legacy of Shah Latif. As
seekers of mystic philosophy, we started exploring the land of Kutch on this
side of the border...seeking from time to time to breach that invisible line
that kept us deprived of a fuller immersion in his much vaster oral tradition
just across the border in Pakistan. But political hostilities held sway and
repeated denials of visas kept us thirsty for that experience.”
I used to work with Virmani at the Kabir Project,
an artist-in-residence initiative anchored by her at the Srishti Institute of
Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore. It was through her that I encountered
Bhitai. Every time she came back from a research trip to Kutch, the office was
filled with songs and stories. She was immersed in a whole new world, and I got
to share some of it. Later, she also brought down singers from Kutch for a
music festival that would help new audiences discover the beauty, wisdom and
longing in Bhitai’s verse.
There was something powerful and moving about the
folk music that embodied this poetry. It was not meant to lull you into a
blissful state but to jolt you out of your slumber. Virmani and Rikhi write,
“If one were to imagine a form that might best capture a conversation between
seeker and God, between lover and elusive beloved, this might be it. No weary
preliminaries, no pretty embellishments, no polite barriers, no delicate
overtures, no middlemen to broker this conversation...a kind of a visceral cry,
a weeping, a lament, a communion, a trace.”
The music was unsettling. It came from a deep
desire for connection not with another human being but with the source of
creation. It was evocative in a manner that I struggle to find the words for
even though I do not believe in a creator god. I was interested in the verse as
much as the music, so I began to develop a more intimate relationship with the
poet by reading and re-reading Anju Makhija and Hari Dilgir’s translations of
his work in a book titled Seeking the
Beloved published by Katha in 2005. These translators prefer to focus on
the poetry unlike Virmani and Rikhi who are also absorbed in the music, the
cultural milieu, the folklore, and the mystical tradition.
“Shah Latif’s literary and spiritual influences
are diverse. He always carried copies of the Qur’an and Rumi’s Mathnawi with him. At a young age, his
travels with the Nath Panthi yogis gave him intimate knowledge of an
iconoclastic stream of Hinduism. His poems have references to aayats from the Qur’an as well as to
yogic vocabulary and practices,” say Virmani and Rikhi. This spiritual fluidity
is threatening to those who abhor intermingling. Under the pretext of
maintaining purity, they encourage divisiveness and spew hate. It is not
uncommon to come across people who call themselves lovers of Bhitai but fail to
appreciate his disregard for sectarian boundaries. One of his poems is
translated as follows:
The Sufi is not
sectarian
He is beloved of no one
He is always at war
within
But shows nothing on
the outside
Those who wish ill to
him
He is their greatest
well-wisher
This book recounts a story involving Bhitai. It
is not clear whether there is a historical record of it or if it is apocryphal.
Nevertheless, it communicates what is easily discernible to anyone who engages
with his poetry with an open heart. Apparently, he was once asked whether he
was Shia or Sunni. He did not feel aligned with either of those identities, so
he said that he was in between the two. The person asking the question was
utterly confused, and replied, “There is nothing between the two!” At this
point, Bhitai said, “Precisely! I am nothing.” Humility is a recurring theme in
his poems because he considers the ego as the source of all conflict.
Who can shun all markers of identity? Is it a
fantasy that only the privileged can indulge in, or is it a choice available to
those who have been oppressed because of their caste or race or gender or
sexual orientation? Does identification fulfill the human need for belonging,
or does it force one to embrace narrow loyalties out of fear? Is it possible to
step in and out of identities, wear them lightly, and not be held captive by
them? These questions have spiritual as well as political dimensions. I pose
them here not as a challenge but as an invitation for readers to reflect on
their own lives.
We can appreciate Bhitai without feeling
compelled to agree with him. I, for one, cannot relate to the idea of
surrendering to a god who is supposed to show me mercy. My conception of the
sacred is anchored in the interconnectedness of all life forms rather than in
obeisance to a superior entity. Moreover, the proposition that “the one who
wounds is the one who saves” sounds too abusive to be alluring. You might say
that it is foolish on my part to bring a feminist lens to poetry written so
many centuries ago but this is important to me if Bhitai is to hold any
relevance for me at all.
“Lack of love is the real malady in this world.
The beloved as physician brings the cure,” write Virmani and Rikhi who
themselves wonder if the poetry ends up reinforcing patriarchal structures.
Bhitai casts the seeker as a woman, and the beloved as a man -- the former
pining for the latter, facing agony in the hope of grace, and eventually
finding resolution mostly in death. The heroines in his poetry -- Sohni, Marui,
Ramkali, Moomal, Leela, Sassi, and others -- are drawn from love legends
popular in Sindh. He uses episodes from these stories, and turns them into
spiritual allegories. They are not meant to be taken literally but they do
circulate in a patriarchal society. Therefore, it is important to engage with
what the gender roles might mean to people who read these poems or listen to
them at concerts or in shrines.
I found that Virmani and Rikhi are open to
readings that subvert patriarchy but are constrained by their heteronormative
outlook. When Moomal asks her sister “to dress like a man, particularly like
Rano, and to lie with her in bed,” the incident is explained away as the
willingness “to make do with distractions and amusements and make-believe in
the absence of the real thing.” The authors lose the opportunity to see this
moment as a challenge to heterosexuality, and to binary understandings of
gender. Can a woman feel complete only if there is a man fulfilling that
function?
Later, in the book, as they speak of sufis -- all
identified as men --- who have “invoked the female voice as the quintessential
seeker’s voice,” we are told that “perhaps it is time now for men to openly
embrace these qualities and clothe them, as beautifully and compellingly, in
the male voice (longing for a female beloved).” Though the intention here is to
free human beings from the clutches of expectations associated with their
gender, the authors seem to think that a simplistic role reversal would fix
things.
Can there be a female beloved when the divine is
conceptualized using language that marks the all-powerful as male? In this
context, can a man long for a male beloved in a male voice? Is it possible to
have an open conversation about the erotic possibilities between the master and
the disciple in a sufi context, especially when their poems are drenched in
passion? Is it necessary to deny the sexual in the pursuit of the spiritual?
Can the two not find a way to co-exist?
These questions are bound to come up because
Virmani and Rikhi present Bhitai as a poet who was looking to transcend
conventional ideas of piety and morality. However, they also caution the
readers to slow down their “discursive, hyperactive minds” and cultivate an
inner life will prepare them to truly receive what Bhitai has to offer. I think
this is a valuable suggestion. Questioning can be helpful if it comes from a
place of wanting to understand. It can be pointless if it is only meant to poke
holes and smirk.
Is there any space for questioning in a tradition
that demands surrender as the only path to truth? What awaits those who refuse
to walk this path? Can faith and skepticism befriend each other? In a world
where people in authority are trying to crush dissent in every possible way,
what is appealing about a singular truth? Is it enabling, or debilitating? You
might have realized that I love asking questions. It reminds me that I am
alive, listening, thinking, engaging, and being responsive to the world within
and around me. It is this questioning that emboldens me to imagine the
spiritual as political, and the political as spiritual.
I admire the fact that Bhitai urges us to wake
up, to notice the gilded cages that we have mistaken for castles, and to find a
path that will liberate us from these illusions. Once we get on to this path,
and stay committed for as long as we are alive, we will feel no need to
dominate, control or exploit someone else. We will begin to rejoice in the
happiness of others, and empathize with their sorrows. It will be impossible
for us to enslave another human being, or to celebrate the occupation of a
territory that does not belong to us. Call me naive if you wish to but I
believe in love, freedom and dialogue.
Chintan Girish Modi is a writer-researcher
who works at the intersection of peace education, gender equality and queer
rights. Get in touch @chintan_connect on Twitter or at chintan.prajnya@gmail.com
