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the-south-asian.com November 2004 |
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November
2004 South Asia Today
Wildlife Adventure
Books Between
Heaven and Hell
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Page 1 of 4 Sufis - the 'poet-saints' by Salman Saeed Minhas
Sufis, escaping
violence and persecution in west and central Asia, came to India ,
settled there and wrote of love. Baba Farid, Bulleh Shah, Madho Lal Hussain,
Kaki, Moinuddin Chishti and many more belonged to different Sufi orders -
but the essence of their teachings was the same - universal tolerance. Their
writings are alive with themes of love, peace, reflection, generosity and
faith - in simple peasant metaphors. Their following was also universal.
Today common people flock to the shrines of these Sufi mystics - Baba Farid
Shakar Ganj of Pakpattan, Bulleh Shah at Kasur, Khwaja Nizamuddin in Delhi,
Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer, Saleem Chishti at Fatehpur Sikri, Sachal Sarmast
in Daraaz, Khairpur in Sindh, Shah Abdul Lateef Bhitai in Sindh. Their Kafis,
Dohras have been kept alive, by contemporary singers, in the hearts
and souls of the common south Asian people, both in cities and in villages.
The Violent Logic of Human history Our ancestral history is a trail of human narrative from Neanderthals to Cro-Magnon [3-5million years ago], which has been augmented by the recent findings by Leakey in Kenya that the story is even older and earlier than that. The dead do not speak; it is we who must speak for them. This history shows many a violent and collaborative twists before which modern man now stands with great arrogance. From primeval tools of slings and arrows we now have ‘mature technology’ in the form of weapons such as ICBMs, atomic, hydrogen, neutron bombs, and cruise missiles and submarines to deliver and destroy mutual enemies. Human groups in the form of tribes, regions, and nation states are still eyeing each with the memories of what territories were lost to whom. Long term suspicions lurk when negotiators sit across tables. During negotiations the threat of weapons is an unspoken reminder as to which side must submit. American Indian tribes, Amazonian Indians, Australian aborigines and countless other cultures have been virtually wiped out. Perhaps the technology of genetic cloning may bring these dead tribes back to life. World War I & World 2 [fought for territorial- economic claims] left about 150 million dead and the use of the Atomic bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki saw the terrible results of this technology. In Vietnam, America used more tonnage of bombs than was used in World War 2. It is the word that has always been the seed, germ, the carrier of ideas, of knowledge, insight, and enlightenment. Buddha repeatedly said Ignorance was the cause of suffering. Marx wrote " Suffering apprehended humanly is the enjoyment of self in man…" Some of the other western writers who continued to document this violence were Sartre, Hemingway, Alain Resnais, the director of the movie "Hiroshima mon Amour". William Faulkner, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech said that modern writers had started to write about " glands" and had forgotten the " human spirit", but that man’s "puny voice " stood ground. Sufi scholars in South Asia also documented this human drama. Buddha claimed life itself was suffering. Apart from Buddha and other great spiritual leaders of the south Asian diaspora, there have been some Sufi saints and poets whose writings are alive with the themes of love, peace, reflection, generosity and faith in simple peasant metaphors. Today common people flock to the shrines of these Sufi Mystics - Baba Farid Shakar Ganj of Pakpattan, Bulleh Shah at Kasur, Khwaja Nizamuddin in Delhi, Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer, Saleem Chishti at Fatehpur Sikri, Sachal Sarmast in Daraaz, Khairpur in Sindh, Shah Abdul Lateef Bhitai in Sindh. Their Kafis, Dohras have been kept alive in the hearts and souls of the common south Asian people both in cities and in villages. The songs by many a village singer, minstrel at the shrines of these saints and by some of the contemporary singers such as Late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Reshma, Junoon , Abida Parveen, Jiji Zarina Baloch in Pakistan and Wajd Ali brothers in India have preserved, extended and mass promoted the messages of some of these South Asian Saints /Sufis and Poets in popular form. What follows below are small essays & quotes from some of these Sufi Poets and mystics from the South Asian lands. They do not discuss annihilation or division between peoples. Their talk is of life after death, and the liberation of the soul and how to live in the present, following the rhythms and cycles of birth, love, rebellion, growth, nurture, maturity and human evolution. Because they lived amidst great social upheaval and unrest, especially later during the fall of the Mughal Empire, their writings questioned and rebelled against the established institutions of the maulvi [priest/clergy] and social norms. The Lahore [left bank of Ravi] Sufi Intellectuals The decline of the Ghaznavids and the rise of the Ghurids in the Lahore region led many scholars to migrate there. Among the notable leading intellects & scholars, famous for their translation of works from Arabic, Persian and Hindi / Sanskrit were: 1. Sheikh Ali Hujweri -[AD 1074] also known as Hazrat Data Ganj Baksh came from Ghazni, wrote a famous book "Kashf-ul-Mahjub" - still published. His shrine is alive with worshippers who come to lay flower wreaths on his grave; near the old city [Bhatti Gate] Lahore, half a mile west of Government College. 2. Masud Saad Salman- [AD 1121] wrote 3 Diwans in Arabic, Persian, Hindi according to Amir Khusro, the famous musical composer. 3. Abu Raihan Albaruni [AD 973-1048] - taught Greek [Unani] Science, and studied Hindu achievements and wrote a magnus opus " Kitab-al Hind". 4. Abul Farj Runi -a poet, born and educated in Lahore [Runi is a village near Lahore]. 5. Sultan Sakhi Sarwar an eminent saint; a Hindu tribe in Punjab is known after his name Sultan.
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