But between Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi and Bulle Shah, the ideas of negation as a poetic agency are not only differently negotiated but are even opposed in their respective political and existential intent.

But before that let me remind the readers on the blog about the politics embedded in the very semiotics of their names: Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi and Bulle Shah. Whereas the former is very specifically enshrined within the titular embellishments (identity through avowal/assertion of titles), the latter wilfully relocates himself within the disavowal of the name (hence, Syed Abdul Shah becomes a mere Bulle Shah – an act of wilfull disrobing and equally wilfull alignment with the marginalized, dispossessed but loved by the mother).

Now onto the poem – I remember listening to an old Sardarji singer of Sufi verses a couple of years ago holding forth on the same issue and in fact citing and singing verses from the two poems to show Bulle Shah in poor light. I had a chat with him after his performance at the Dilli Haat where I had agrued with him that whereas Mevlana’s negation of the self was rooted in surrender, Bulle Shah’s was clearly the opposite – namely, the rejection of rigid identities but also the assertion of a newly emergent and challenging creative ego whose resonance could be extended to an as yet nascent social ego. My intent was not to ridicule the poetic stature of the Mevlana but to underline the difference and thereby point out the injustice being done to Bulle Shah in labelling him as no more than a plagiarist.

It was obvious to me that unlike Bulle Shah, the Mevlana couldn’t ever bring himself to say:

Avval-aakhar aap nu jaana
Na koi dooja hor pacchaana
Maithon na koi har syaana
Bulle shauh Kharha hai kaun

(I deem myself to be the beginning and the end
Other than me I do not recognise another
Another one wiser than me isn’t there
Says Bulle Shah who’s the one who stands and dares)

The political and existential intent of these verses is nowhere visible in the poem – a poem of surrender on the path of love – by the Mevlana. Bulle Shah was openly intransigent and even self-destructively sacrilegious. He may begin from Rumi – not an Urdu poet in any case – but he may take off on his own and eventually produce something radically different from him

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended
By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
Is the next way to draw new mischief on.

In any case this thing about Bulle Shah having lifted his poem from Rumi is by now old hat and was picked by an old Sardarji, a Sufi singer – another Sahmatite-Anhadite – many years ago. So Danish discovery is no discovery at all.

Number two: while Mr Danish Husain embarks upon his polite crusade to denigrate Punjabi and produces the translation of the Rumi poem by one Nicholason, he conveniently forgets to cite Bulle Shah’s text where the alleged ‘plagiarism’ is said to have occurred.

The political intent and the individual’s creative ego is far sharper and daring than in Mevlana’s poem. In fact, Bulle Shah’s poem is not only far more intransigent and fearless but a much greater poetic act.

Rumi can never bring himself to say:

Avval aakhir aap nu jaana
Na koi dooja hor pehchaana
Maithon hor na koi siyaana
Bulla! ooh khadda hai kaun

I am the first, I am the last
None other, have I ever known
I am the wisest of them all
Bulla! do I stand alone?

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended
By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
Is the next way to draw new mischief on.

In any case this thing about Bulle Shah having lifted his poem from Rumi is by now old hat and was picked by an old Sardarji, an apology of a Sufi singer – another Sahmatite-Anhadite – many years ago. So Danish discovery is no discovery at all.

Number two: while Mr Danish Husain embarks upon by now a well-known but badly-strategised deep desire of the Urdu-daaNs to denigrate Punjabi, he produces the translation of the Rumi poem by one Nicholason, he conveniently forgets to cite Bulle Shah’s text where the alleged ‘plagiarism’ is said to have occurred.

The political intent and the individual’s creative ego is far sharper and daring than in Mevlana’s poem. In fact, Bulle Shah’s poem is not only far more intransigent and fearless but a much greater poetic act.

Rumi can never bring himself to say:

Avval aakhir aap nu jaana
Na koi dooja hor pehchaana
Maithon hor na koi siyaana
Bulla! ooh khadda hai kaun

I am the first, I am the last
None other, have I ever known
I am the wisest of them all
Bulla! do I stand alone?

So take a deep breath Mr Danish!

When that Rabbi song became popular, coincidentally I was reading translations of Rumi’s poems and I stumbled upon this:

I find this Rumi poem strikingly similar to Bulle Shah’s composition. Savour it !

From The Mathnawi…

What is to be done, O Muslims, for I do not know my own identity: I am neither a Christian, nor Jew, neither a Zoroastrian nor Muslim.

I hail neither from the East nor the West, neither from land nor from sea; neither from the mine of Nature nor from the revolving spheres.

Neither from dust nor from water; neither from air nor nor fire; neither from the throne of God nor the earth; neither from existence nor from entity.

Neither from India nor China; neither from Bulgaria nor Scythia; neither from the land of the two Iraqs*, nor from the province of Khurasan.

Neither from this world nor the next; neither from heaven nor from hell; neither from Adam nor Eve; neither from Paradise nor the garden of Eden.

The placeless is my place; the traceless is my trace; I have neither body nor soul for I belong to the soul of the Beloved.

I have renounced duality; the two worlds I see as one; One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call.

“He is the First, He is the Last; He is the Manifest; He is the Hidden.”^ Save “Oh, He is”~ and “Oh, He who is”~ no other cry is mine.

I am distraught with the cup of Love; the two worlds have slipped from my hands; save revelry and spiritual carouse no other aim have I.

Were I to spend a single day of my life without Thee, from that time and that hour I’d be eternally ashamed of myself.

Could I have Thee all by myself for a single moment, I’d trample on both the worlds and throw up my arms in ecstasy.

O Shams-i-Tabriz I have become so intoxicated in this world that apart from drunkenness and revelry I have no other tale to tell.

Jalalu’d-Din Muhammad Rumi, 1207-1273 A.D.
Scholar, Mystic, Poet, Sufi

Translated by Prof. R.A. Nicholson
M.S. Israeli, ICCR, 1972

Notes

* The Arab Iraq or Lower Mesopotamia; and Persian Iraq or Central Persia
^From Holy Qur’an
~Famous cries of Derwishes.

Now, this opens a whole new debate on plagiarism. Was Bulle Shah trying to pass off a remix version of Rumi as his? What does this do to Bulle Shah’s credibility as a poet? Let’s see where this conversation moves now. :-)

Thanks and best regards,

Danish

Vaise yeh maan lo ke Urduwalas ka problem hai Punjabi ko lekar. Sooner you get into a self-critical mode, the better. Just as the Hindutva-ites other Urdu, the Urduwalas other the smaller others such as Punjabi etc. Do not go only by the collective cultural wisdom of the disillusioned ex-comarades such as Aditya Nigam and Sohail Hashmi. For, about the comardes it is said that once they leave the party, they keep on leaving it for the next twenty years or so.

One song by Rabbi Shergill has had the entire India dancing to the highly addictive dosage of Bulle Shah.

Hope the next comment is not be about popularity of Himesh Reshmiya’s “Tera tera tera surur”. Pls god, spare!

1.

But there are many in the Punjabi literature who simply cannot (unfortunately, the campaign to vilify the Punjabi literature has gone on unabated despite the Angrez and they have remained hidden from the pan-Indian gaze) be brushed aside with the callousness that, at least, I see reflected in your patronizing comparison.

2.

I am not ashamed of Punjabi being a rustic language.

I wouldn’t otherwiset have with diligent application burned the midnight oil to prove that the poetry included in the Guru Granth is not his poetry at all.

should read:

It wouldn’t otherwiset have with diligent application burned the midnight oil to prove that the poetry included in the Guru Granth is not his poetry at all.

Well said Mehmood Sa’ab. Very well said, indeed! “sirhane mir ke aahista bolo, abhi tuk rote rote so gaya hai,” is your example from Mir and you aver that it is not elitist. Indeed it is not. But what is popular-culturalist in it? Mir is ‘elitist’ in the sense that he is a poet ‘read’ and ‘caroused’ by the cultural elite that patronized Urdu as a mark of its linguistic identity. Even Ghalib and, and I know it is controversial, Faiz are. Nor am I unduly worried about this ‘hide-and-seek’ mode of elitism.
Where is Faiz in terms of popular culture – except when a classical vocalist like Meeta Pandit sings (where else but at the annual Sahmatite-Anhadite attempts at beating the early-January fog) his “Hum Dekhenge” with a visible, desperate but convictionless desire to seek integration. There are too many ‘rasiyas’ of ‘gajal’ and Urdu shaayari seeking similar validations – even in Himachal and Rajasthan. And, man, have the Anup Jalotas and Pankaj Udhas so udhasli contributed to its popularization?

I am glad that Sahir succeeds not as a distinctly Urdu shayar. I love his – “Raat bhi hai kuchh bheegi bheegi, chaand bhi hai kuchh madhdham madhdham” and within that “tapte dil par yun girti hai teri nazar se pyaar ki shabnam, jalte hue jungle par jaise barkha barse ruk ruk tham tham”. I also find his “Jaane kya tune kehi, jaane kya maine suni” adorable as I do, though with considerable less warmth, his “chalo ik baar phir se ajnabi ban jaayen hum dono”. But what is this “Chin-o-Arab hamara, hindostan hamara, rehne ko ghar nahin hai, saara jahaan hamara”. Even the burning desire to be ironical falls flat politically. It is bad dystopian poetry sung beautifully by Mukesh and composed equally beautifully by – was it – Khayyam. And this “Mein pal do pal ka shaayar” is the ultimate “choon choon ka murabba” – sentimental beyond retrieve. (Sohail Sa’ab’s piece and earlier yours about being a Muslim in India belongs here) Even Mukesh sounds horrible singing this one and the composition is unquestionably pedestrian despite its enormous popularity amongst the ‘gajal-spewing rasiks(?)’.

Point Two

In your unbridled confidence, you go ahead and claim: “Urdu has a large variety of registers, larger than any other Indian language, English and Punjabi included, therefore its reduction to any one register could only happen because of the triumph of modern Hindi.” I mean you couldn’t be historically, linguistically and culturally so far off the mark. Firstly, why bring in poor English into this game of one upmanship. Obviously, you have no clue as to what the Punjabi language and literature is all about. You wouldn’t otherwise make such a churlish statement. It reveals very clearly why Punjabi remains vilified despite the Angrez having left our shores many many decades ago. Incidentally, which registers are you talking about? Are these linguistic registers? If so, have you even heard of Majhi, Doabi, Puadhi, Malwai, Pothohari, Saraiki, Multani? I am aware of the controversy about Seraiki and Multani and the charges of cultural colonialism traded against the hegemony of an abstract Punjabi but I am referring here to the registers of “exchange” – linguistically, culturally and, in an elitist sense, philosophically. No, Mehmood Sa’ab – ignorance cannot be traded as bliss anymore otherwise even the Togadias and Modis will pass the muster one day.

In a surge of selective generosity, you concede that “Punjabi has a medieval literature as rich as Urdu”. Thank you indeed. One has to thank you because we live in a world where the Urdu-elite has still not come to terms with the fact that the 13th century Sufi savant Baba Farid chose to write in Punjabi. I wouldn’t otherwiset have with diligent application burned the midnight oil to prove that the poetry included in the Guru Granth is not his poetry at all. That is 13th century we are talking about. How many comparable 13th century poets do have in Urdu from the 13th century? I would very much like to be enlightened. Unless you invoke Amir Khusrau – and did he indeed write in Urdu – of the Muzaffar Ali cc-revival who spent bulk of his life writing panegyrics to his myriad lordships. How many do you have from the 16th century comparable to the lyricism of Shah Hussain or the celebrative and secular mysticism of Nanak? I do not wish to go over the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries – the list is simply too long and examples would chokingly overwhelm you. One song by Rabbi Shergill has had the entire India dancing to the highly addictive dosage of Bulle Shah. I wouldn’t go any further. I know Mir and Ghalib are alltime greats. But there are many in the Punjabi literature who simply cannot (unfortunately, the campaign to vilify the Punjabi literature has gone on unabated despite the Angrez and they have remained hidden from the pan-Indian gaze) brushed aside with the callousness that, at least, I see reflected in your patronizing comparison. Even in the 20th century, the stature of Puran Singh and Ustad Daman (and I am mentioning only two) is to my mind no less. One needs an open and unfettered mind to receive them. I am ashamed of Punjabi being a rustic language. That is its strength that people like Sahir and ilk couldn’t imbibe. Good for them and good for us.

And finally, you ask – “ab isme Sahir ki kya ghalti hai.” Bhai uski koi ghalti nahin, ghalti hamari hai jo hum ek generic term ko ek individual par utaare ja rahe hain.

Ek shanshah nay khoobsoorat taj mahal banwa kar
Hum gariboon ki mohobat ka udaya hai mazak.

Quite monumental, this couplet, a little bigger than Taj itself. The NEW of art/poetry, I believe, sabotages the existing aesthetic value judgment, if it has a courage to do so. This couplet is golden in that sense.
The political layer in the couplet is that the pain and creativity ( I mean micro-creativity) of labourers disappearing in the very form of the monument. Everything around the world is surprisingly dominated by this very phenomenon. The form of Architecture looks hierarchical in that sense, because all the power structures used this over-awing of the masses through the form of it. Not surprising that the symbolic significance of it often belittles the people’s simpler drives and other needs. So many wars for these symbols of power, money and territory, but very little for the understanding of people itself.
It must be unwittingly, that the innocence of an artist (here, Architect ) who dreams a form of an monument, becomes a tool in the hands of various players of the ruling structure at a particular period of time. The above couplet has succeeded to restore that dream in some other mysterious way. It has demolished the King’s appropriation of the Artist’s dream-form ( Taj Mahal ) without demolishing the beauty of Taj. Poetry must be very close to that inner thought process in comparison to the actual realization of a dream-form of a monument in marble or some other material. The material inevitably engages people, mostly the sacrifices of the poor to construct it. The New aesthetic will talk about that in poetry/art rather than that so called love as the main living element of Taj.

In that sense, I guess, poetry becomes instantly universal, without the thought of being written in a particular language. I am certainly not holding a brief for the meaning as a leading factor in poetry, but without a people oriented meaning the form looks monumental for a tourist attraction only. That is romanticism in its ordinary sense.

Sahir too was a romantic poet, but that is anther debate that how romanticism helps a poet to become a political poet or artist. Often, the romantic poet fails to come to grips with the reality out there. Faiz was an exception. Consider Keats, who is believed to be romantic, who just ended not being so, but is not political even. But what is political, or even Poetry ?
So, the debate never ends…

As for Sahir-well, I happen to think he is sharp, bitter (his first book was called ‘talKhiyaaN’!) and a keen observer of human nature. I don’t think he even tried to put a “veneer of sophistication” on anything. I remember reading “sanaa-Khwaan-e-taqdiis”….and not being able to read anything else for weeks! The tender lyricism of “chaaNd maddham hai aasmaaN chup hai” still haunts me. Perhaps I’m a sentimentalist/romantic when reading poetry, but isn’t all poetry ultimately sentiment/romance? I happen to think that Sahir’s popularity as a lyricist and/or poet stems from the fact that people recognize something that’s really good, and they buy it much more if it’s on sale.

I have enjoyed Chin o Arab hamara before I knew the Iqbal connection. And I continue to enjoy Sahir without dissecting his poetry with linguistic scissors.

While I disagree with your (with what I feel are hasty, if not unkind) remarks on Sahir, would like to see you, as Mahmood has indicated, elaborate on the direction of the change.

Somewher in the middle of your ‘privileged’ argument you opine and I quote: “At the same time, it is difficult to sustain criteria that can simply be called purely literary, as if politics is something that taints the pristine gestation of art.” This is yet another instance of mimicry as discourse. Nobody has made that assumption that you seem to be (shadow)fighting here. Sahir’s politics – if indeed there is one in his poetry in much the same way as it is there in the poems of for instance Faiz – is too lachrymose, too syrupy and too unhelpful within the larger resonance of existence to be good enough even for the annual sunning of Sahmatic and Anhadic banners.

Mr Farooqui also asserts that Sahir “came to stand for an attitude and as a proponent of instrumental uses of art in a cultural arena that went much wider than the literary community”. Are you trying to suggest that his polpularity ‘included’ the pariah called the “literary community” or did it simply “transcend” them or did it simply put them under the Derridean erasure? And all this talk about oral tradition that Mr Bhupinder invokes – hoe do you understand Sahir’s “Chin-o-Arab Hamara” except in reference to Allama Iqbal’s pan-Islamic vision of “Chin-o-Arab”? Talk of literacy, indeed!

People – ‘men’ (I haven’t mercifully come across many women) – who find in Sahir’s poetry ‘an attitude and a resonance’ and who still treat him as a cult figure, seem to have been moved more by the ‘aurality’ of the poet rather than his ‘orality’. In ant case, I had referred to Sahir in reference to his “mar gaye lut gaye” brand of failed irony which Mr Hashmi’s self-fleggelating piece seemed to me to wallow in. And I stick to my position. The terms of discourse must change.

On fossilization: I think it is correct to say that Sahir’s poetry (or anyone else’s) is fossilized- but only in the sense that we are all become fossils one day.
Sahir’s contribution lay in the fact that in a country where the oral tradition dominates, in the backdrop of a massively illiterate population, he brought both poetry and the humanistic message of the progressive movement via a medium that is susceptible to crassness and mediocrity.