Ld eo | : Z% iF He ie Orient BlackSwan i j i | | | Poetics ; and Politics of | Sufism & Bhakti i Temyertts WAT PA . a TET A ger Edited by Kavita Panjabi1 The Erotic to the Divine KABIR’S NOTION OF LOVE AND FEMININITY Purushottam Agrawal ae GIVES TESTIMONY OF HIS experience of love in the clearest terms, and by invoking the name of Sukhdev (Shukadey, the son of Ved Vyasa, who narrated Shrimadbhagwata—story of Krishna's loves and life—to king Parikshita), invokes tradition as well: Kam milave Rama ku, je koi jaane raakh Kabir bichara kya kare je sukhdev bole saakh If held steadfast, erotic desire can take you to Ram. What shall poor Kabir do? After all, Sukhdev testifies this. (Gupta 1986: 86) And yet the editor of the Kabir Granthavali, Mata Prasad Gupta, remarks: ‘At only one place, and then only in a suppressed voice, has Kabir accepted that controlled and limited erotic desire (ham) can also be of assistance in [trying to] join with Ram ...’ (Gupta 1986: ). Ironically, Gupta quotes the above sakhi' as the very proof of this ‘suppressed voice’ This notion of a ‘suppressed voice’ is clearly of Mata Prasad Gupta, and not of Kabir. On the contrary, Kabir sings his songs of erotic desire (kamabhavana) for Ram with full fanfare —and that too in the voice of a woman, even taking the form of a woman, along with giving resounding expression to the ‘social emotion’ (samajabhavana). Kabir’s love destroys the dichotomy that is assumed to exist between Ramabhavana and kamabhavana, between the body and the soul, The very conclusion of Kabir’s search is that, in the relationship between This essay is based on a lecture presented at the Kabir Utsav organized by the Sahitya Akademi in Banaras in 2004. I am grateful to my student Tyler Williams, who is currently researching historiographical approaches to the Bhakti movement, for helping render the current manuscript. The present avatar of this essay would not have been possible without Kavita Panjabi,the most forgiving editor of this volume.56 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia kamabhavana (sexual desire—the agitation of love), Ramabhavana (spiritual restlessness) and samajabhavana (outrage towards injustice), cach of these elements promotes the ‘strength of the other rather than making it weaker. He takes recourse to the creative feminine for the realisation and expression of love, and he takes the form of a woman at the moments of union (milan) and separation (viraha). In such moments, the tears he sheds in the thrill of union and the pain of separation become the grains of dust that blow in the courtyard of his poetry—and also the tears of some readers! i Kabir's love is not a mere poetic convention or emotional state. On the contrary, he transforms the experience of love itself into a Cognitive action. Whether it is the world of inner spiritual experience or the ‘external’ social environment, through the eyes of love, Kabir Sees the internal and external as seamlessly united. He assays all things on the touchstone of love. ‘ res are certainly complications and complexities concerning the ina lationship of the sensory and mental facets of this love, which po — ee the of hand, Kabir exhibits the dient sie eet ms ‘¢) of condemnation for woman, Sui imself takes the form of a woman. This is a afer ot us ‘then again, throughout his poetry Ka pene a8 with complication and paradox! TI Voice even ane ais question of Kabir using a ‘suppressed : place? This question arises only among them have chosen t ‘worldly’ versus ‘othersworldi forget, however, that love, for the commentators of Kabir. Some ‘0 divide the very notion of love into ly’ (laukik versus alaukik) forms. They whether worldly or other-worldly, is id_unified emotion which is rooted in cr - xual love an ue there ricer =F similarity between the temperaments of both re siete ee and deeply ‘radical’ commentators. eee eee both, love is an idle mental pastime, and to abppent € Context of Kabir is thought to be particularly upic. The reason for this remarkable h; : critics is that both want to Kabir = rather than attempt e to hay i i i ae Pi Ne a dialogue with Kabir’s thought and his The Erotic to the Divine 57 For the reader or listener who wants to understand Kabir’s poems in their totality, the correct question should be: what is the distinctive quality of Kabir’s love? What kind of relationship is there between his kamabhavana, Ramabhavana, and samajabhavana? In what sense is his love a cognitive act? No sensitive reader or listener of Kabir can miss the striking contradiction between his sanskar of condemning women as such and the female persona adopted by the poet in his most poignant moments. Even if we accept the goal of controlling his sexual desire as Kabir’s motivation for denouncing woman, then the question still arises that why wasn’t it then similarly necessary for female sants like Mira, Mahadevi Akka or Andal to denounce the other gender? We should first pay attention to the fact that Kabir is not the only male who, despite giving spiritual instruction (updesh) filled with condemnation for woman, is compelled to take on the voice and form of a woman at the time of spiritual practice (sadhana) and poetry. On the level of aesthetic sensibility, the creative power of the feminine has been accepted by poets and spiritual practitioners (sadhaks) across the world. Among the males who practice the sadhana of loving the paramatma (the supreme spirit or godhead), some take the form of a woman themselves; others imagine the paramatma itself in the form of a woman. The acceptance of the power of the creative feminine can be observed in both cases. This acceptance should lead us to some reflection, because on the level of artistic or poetic sensibility, this acceptance becomes unavoidable for even those males who, on the level of sanskar and conscious thought, do not accept the woman’s capacity to love, nor her capacity for thought. This phenomenon is also worth our attention because we see that even those sadhaks who themselves become a woman in spiritual practice are unable to sensitively reflect on the actual state of the woman on the level of social reality. For example, even Kabir, who from the outset rejects the logic of the caste system and of casteism, characterises the woman as nothing more than the ‘pit of hell’ (Gupta 1986: 68) and ‘the destroyer of the three joys of devotion, liberation and knowledge’ (Gupta 1986: 67). On the other hand, the woman who is devoted in complete respect to her husband (i.e., a pativrata) becomes the metaphor for Kabir’s bhakti (devotion), and at times he even shows approval and appreciation for the institution of widowhood and sati (the immolation of widows) as an expression of devotion (Das 1928: 117). The rationale of the caste system, on the other hand, at no place or and in no form becomes the recipient of Kabir’s appreciation, and this is why the58 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia grand elevation of the institution of sati in his poetry becomes all the more peculiar and deserving of our attention. Is this paradox, between condemning the woman on the level of sanskar and spiritual instruction and then taking a woman's form in regards to love, not thought provoking? Is this acceptance of the power of woman in one’s poetic understanding of love on the one hand and the detachment to her actual condition at the level of social reality on the other, not deserving of thought? What is the basis of this paradox? What is its inner meaning? Why does the discourse on femininity that exists at the level of poetic sensibility in Kabir and other sadhaks fail to take the form of gender-sensitive discourse at the level of social thought? Despite turning love into a cognitive activity, ie can’ eee tntinage to take cognisance of the social condition oe his creative femininity manage to reach the inine discourse in the social realm? I have attempted to investigate the above questions in the context Se in’an essay titled ‘Balam Aav Hamare Geh Re ...’ (Agrawal eens om to my arguments in that essay, many '€ question: “Why should any critic feel the need to defend Kabir?’ (Kumar 2000: 160). ' an Pa Be ey from being one of defending Kabir's—or EaWicsanesians 7s is to unequivocally reject it. This is Sebubcinc asc that essay. The principal question remains, Woman to-take she fone Cay for the sadhak-poet who condemns of a woman in the deepest moments of his poetry and spiri ag piritual practice? Thi -deepe " fundamental question of ae sade his question was, in fact, the tatma in the idiom of a woman pained If the mutual sexual attraction between then what is the need to drag Ram into by separation from her lover? man and woman is this sinful, The Erotic to the Divine 59 I hope that the above questions do not reflect attempts to ‘defend’ Kabir, In fact, these very questions compelled me to write that essay, and indeed the present one as well. sok Rather than tearing apart Kabir’s poetic sensibility into agreeable little pieces, if it is instead grasped in its totality, then it is difficult not to see that love itself is Kabir’s departure point, love itself is his ideal. Kabir sees and values the world through his love-cognition: love the fundamental cognitive act for him. Whether it is his reflections" \ on supreme reality or his social criticism,/the subterranean Saraswati anga and Yamuna of Kabir’s experience,ard—his— that waters the Whether sentimental or manifested in action, the life-breath of his love is surrender. What we should examine then is the nature of the one being surrendered to, What kind of relationship does the language of this surrender create with real life? Kabir lives—and dies—for his ‘Allah Ram’. He entreats that master to have compassion (mihar) on his servant; the very voice of his entreaty thus becomes the voice of the oppressed individual who interrogates the social order. Not only this, but Kabir’s love-cognition sees the image of his Allah Ram who he’ loves in all people of all religious identities, be they man or woman. Here and there becoming a child, and in most places becoming the bereft woman separated from her lover, or then again a happily married woman, Kabir says: Allah Ram, jiun tere tain Bande pari mehar karo mere sain Kya uju jap manjan kiyen, kya masit sir nayen Roja karen namaj gujaren, kya hajj qaabe jayen Brahmin gyarasi krai chabison qazi ‘mah rajaan Gyrah mah jude kyon kije, ekhi manhi saman Jo re khudai masit basat hai, aur mulik kis hera Tirath murat Ram niwasa, duhu mein kinahun nah era Poorib disa Hari ka basa, pachhim Allah mukama Dil hi khoj, dilen dil bhitar, ihan Ram Rahimana Jeti aurat maradan kahiye sab mein roop tumhara Kabir panguda Allah Ram ka, Hari guru pir hamara. Allah Ram, J live for you. My master, please have compassion on this one who entreats you60 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia oo one perform wazoo, chant or take ritual baths, what shall one lo’ Shall one keep Roza, do Namaz, go on the hajj or to qaaba? The brahmin keeps a fast, the qazi keeps Ramazan for a month, Why do they keep the other 11 months separate, when all are equal? If God lives in a mosque, then to whom belongs the rest of existence? i “ieee live in pilgrimage places and idols, but I didn’t Hari lives in the East, Allah in the West, Search inside your heart, for there lies Ram-Reheman As many women and-men as there may be, in all lies Your form as aa , ais li Rams child, because Hari is our guru, our pir (Gupta p Dake 8S not necessary that every lover vigilanly tuxn her oF lcpaipmery ae aD soigosial criticism, it is also true that in both Sectethin peat ei am lly clashes with prevailing social norms. In ere wih in the spiritual Practices of many a mystic. Of the tenes em this clash remains only an inner meaning Themegiadiacaet, readers can. ‘read’ (or not) if they so desire. itis not an inexplicit ir is that his love directly challenges the social; Ram, knows for ceri seen meaning’. Kabir, the ‘son’ of Allah and countless forme al py et it is god, who expresses himself in the another way, Kabir’s = men and women in the world. To put it in pul citerscate te brcoeaition inyolves the expansion of one’s in which to accept the inna ny nat @ space is created within it Kabir’s poetic densi ae humanity of one’s social ‘other’. In worldviews that, while teen a» ditected toward those systems and birth-ascribed social identi Ek kathi kathi bharam Kahe, Kabir ka hije, lagawe, Samta si bastu na pawe hari sujhe so anjan dije The Erotic to the Divine 61 Say Kabir, what should be done? May I be given sight so that I might see Hari (Gupta 1986: 311) (he relationship between this vision of Hari and the attainment of equality—in other words, Ramabhavana and samajabhavana—springs from Kabir's kamabhavana and his notion of love. This notion of love is as relevant now as it was in Kabir’s time: to truly understand this relevance we need only to remember that Kabir harshly criticised every worldview of his time that turned individuality into nothing more than a symbol of a given social identity. What we can learn from him is to similarly criticise all such paradigms and ideologies in our own time. Kabir didn’t try to start a new religion by merely criticising Hinduism or Islam. His love-cognition gave him a deep insight into the nature of religious power, and thus Kabir assays religiosity itself on the touchstone of his love-cognition; and this love-cognition itself takes the form of the totality of labour, love and spiritual pursuit, Thus, Kabir sees clearly how the ‘Faustian pact’ of religion deprives man of even his individuality (Agrawal 2004: 208-29). Those who are bent on putting Kabir into the service of their own political obsessions and fantasies just cannot understand Kabir’s concept of love, There are of course many such people in our time; there must have been more in his. And he must have been keeping just these people in mind when he said: Hira tahan na kholiye jahan kunjaron ki haat Shaaj hi gaanthi baandhiye lijiye apni baat Do not show your diamond in the vegetable market, Tie up your bundle, and be on your way (Singh 1972: 162) Kabir’s Ram is situated in the inner self (to such a degree that ‘desiring and missing you, I have become you’) and he is also situated in the social world. According to Kabir, this understanding of Ram’s presence in the social world is the root of true wisdom and devotional feeling: Bhagati jao par bhaw na jae 0 hari ke charan niwasa Je jan jaani japen jag jiwan, tin ka gyan na nasa The impact of my feeling of devotion that centres on Hari’s feet shall not go62 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia The people who chant the name of Jagjivan, their wisdom will never be destroyed. (Gupta 1986: 285-86) Time and time again, Kabir calls his Ram ‘the Life of the World’ (jagjivan). Because he is able to see Ram as the life of the world, because he understands that Ram permeates all of existence, Kabir tells the pandit: Ved paddhyan ka yeh phal pande, sab ghat dekhai Rama Janam maran thain to tu chute, sufal hohin sab kama Hey pandit, the fruit of reading the Vedas is being able to see Hari in all bodies. Then you are freed from birth and death, and all your actions are Successful (Gupta 1986: 169) Vedas, the earliest canonical texts of Hindu tradition, often come as @ symbol of religious orthodoxy in. Kabir’s poetry. me people become completely immersed in love while ignoring Society; other people become involved in. social revolution while ignoring love. In this situation, one is forced to say: ‘My beloved, don’t expect that kind of love anymore’ (‘Mujhse pehlisi munabbat meri re ee But nowhere does Kabir suggest postponing love ee a ia ete., is destroyed. Nor does he limit the meaning one ee le wrangling with social power, Indeed, he makes cateokan ee * wasted in this cognition there is a continuous, Bae a ? between kamabhavana, Ramabhavana and ee _ on not an elementary sequence that dictates that Paths '¢ before ‘that’. Kabir speaks with his beloved Ram B Moments of love, and when criticising soc For Kabir, Ram's simultaneous Presence in the oe in the » the futility of temples, mosques and im. He sees clearly that valuing the Person on the basis of their Stupidity and waste. It is clear that this clari distressed. that wh; Personal qualities, can be nothing but ty is not available to everyone. Kabir is at seems so lucidly clear and simple to him, is ates all those present in his time (and indeed in exation and distress becomes so great that Kabir Ours as well)! This The Erotic to the Divine 63 cannot help but say to Ram that may be ‘your world’ has gone nuts! People insist on worshipping you in the ways, which you probably cannot stand: Rama Rai bahi bikal mati mori Kai yeh duni diwani teri Je pooja Hari nahin bhawe so puhanhar chadhawe Bhaw prem ki puja ta thain bhayo dev tahin duja Ka kije bahut pasara pujije pujanhara Kahe Kabir main gawa main gawa aap lakhawa Jo ihi pad mahin samana so prujanhar sayana May be I have lost my sense, or may be the whole world has The worshiper offers Hari the worship he doesn't like, He doesn't know the worship Hari does like, The worship of love, which marks your existence separate from that of God With all this proselytising, what shall be done? May the worshiper. be worshipped! Kabir says, I sang, I sang and showed myself That worshipper who understands this pad, he 1986; 311) s the wise one (Gupta This is Kabir’s ‘shabad’ (literally ‘word’, what his compositions are called) stating poetically the inevitable conscience of love and_social concern, whether it is secular or spiritual—the love presupposes the existence of two separate entities. And yet, the ‘truth’ such love arises {0 realise is just this: ‘who can distinguish the water from the ocean?” The emotive ‘worship’ presupposes a distinct ‘worshipped’—and yet such worship is the worship of the worshipper as well. The love relationship with Ram is not just the realisation of self; it is also the realisation of the same ‘selfness’ of the ‘other’ on a very deep level. It is creating a relationship of love not only with Ram, but also with the other, be it the other individual or the social other. The realisation of one’s immersion in God and that of seeing God in all living beings ‘s complimentary to a ‘wise worshipper’ like Kabir. Such love-worship suits both Kabir and Ram. It is quite another matter that these days some are intent on worshipping Ram through hatred, and others are trying to characterise Kabir as hateful aggression Personified. Such people distress Kabir to no end and he never minces words while taking them on. E Kabir, the bhakta, the practitioner of love-worship, SOmetiEeS becomes a child in his poetry and at other times reaffirms his identity64 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia as theslave’ of Ram, but his most preferred mode of expressing his love is to adopt the persona of a woman, to speak using ‘women’s speech’, sok At the time during which Kabir was writing, the imagining of a deity without qualities or form (nirgun-nirakar) was not unprecedented, hor was the practice of sadhana based on the absence of one’s lover. Kabir found both these elements readily available in his immediate intellectual environment, both. in the dravid upaji bhakti tradition and the viraha-bhava tradition (which used the spiritual metaphor of separation from an ‘earthly’ beloved) of the Sufis, However, the imagining of @ masculine nirgun deity and the sadhana tradition aoe Separate from one another:/Sufi philosophy Sy iceman the divine, but not to the devotee. The cine etamusicn to the devotee and of masculinity to the oe Aah South Asian Sufi poetry, and scholars have practices on rng influence of Indian folk traditions and spiritual his tradition. As Ann Marie Schimmel points out: In the provi ¥ ca waite of Sindh, as well as in Punjab, a special aspect ystical appreciation of women can be observed that is rarely encountere: other parts of the Muslim world, i.e., the representation eer in the form of a woman... In the western part of tradition, aah Sty to Kashmir—the poets followed the Hindu ora loving bride. aaa s hoes soul as the longing girl, a faithful wife, oem ep heroines of the Sindhi and Panjabi folk Soul in search of the eon and many others—represent the human of the beloved, a beloved to whom she can be united only by endless sufferi eee aa and eventually through death on the Path. ‘ created by the a “foreign clean g tne followers of the bhakti tradition, as being spiritual practice and fey ntl appropriated by Sufis from Indian ind folk-life, The Sufis of Arabia conceived the iv The Erotic to the Divine 65 and other nirgun poets represent a continuation of the popular, anonymous poetic compositions. Kabir’s ‘mysticism’ occupies its own place in his writing; however, Kabir’s sensibility— in the mind of the listener/reader—echoes her own feelings—not necessarily ‘spiritual’ or ‘mystical’, but the simple, basic emotions of desire, pleasure and suffering. His poetry is not necessarily to be read as a ‘do-it-yourself guide’ to ‘sadhana-oriented mysticism’ or ghat sadhana. Consider the following lines: Aai na sakon tujh pe sakon na tujh bulai Jiara yuhin lehuge biraha tapai.tapai. Kabir, bithani ko meench de ke aapa dikhlai Aath pahar ka dajhna mo pe sahya na jai. Birhani ubhi panth siri panthi bujhe dhai Ek sabad kahi peev ka kab re milenge aai I cannot come to you, I cannot call you Burning like this, the pain of separation from you will take my life, (Gupta 1986: 15) Kabir says, let this distressed woman die, or else show yourself I can’t bear to burn like this twenty-four hours a day. (Gupta 1986: 18) The distressed woman is standing on the side of the road, Asking every passer-by to tell her once; how long she has to wait to see the beloved. (Gupta 1986: 13) Now, if it had not been pointed out beforehand that these are the lines of a ‘sadhana-oriented mystic’? (Mishra 1994: 139) of an other- worldly sadhak immersed in the obscure speculations of the next world, if their sadness and sensibility had been allowed to ‘open’ themselves in your mind—to speak for themselves—then there is nothing ‘otherworldly’ about them. Yes, they are ‘out of this world’ but not in the sense of belonging to the realm of theoretical mysticism but because of their poignant simplicity and resonant nostalgia. The simplicity makes the paradox even more telling: on one hand, the absorption of one’s self in the yoice of a woman, and on the other this terrible condemnation of woman. For Kabir, femininity is a metaphor for the agency of love, for the pacity to be able to love. In order to attain the capacity to love, he takes the form of a female in his poetry and makes the object of his love, ‘loving’ Ram, not the avatar Ram. Kabir is not a theorist of abstract love; he is a poet of the heart and knows that without being66 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia absorbed in some kind of ‘form’, one can not be a lover or a poet. The question is: what kind of form should one take? Just as Kabir’s femininity is a metaphor for the capacity to love and surrender, Ram in his poetry is also a metaphor for utopia, the ‘life of the world’ of his imagination, and the ‘shabad’ (word) that takes the form of unbroken continuity of the inner and outer worlds. Kabir’s Ram is in no way a metaphor for a casteism whose ideal is determined by some birth-ascribed caste identity. Someone is low because of being born a shudra; someone else is born hateful and deserves suspicion for being born a Brahmin—both these discourses of identity are opposed to the Ramabhavana and samajabhavana of Kabir. Kabir's Ram reveals his form in all men and women (‘Jeti Gurtati, maradan kahiye) (Gupta 1986: 301)—not only in men, nor only in the men and women of a ‘chosen people’, as some people would like to imagine! The most elementary quality of ‘nirgun, Ram’ is his identity as the name given to human being’s humanness and spiritual essence, besides also being the name given to that equality of human beings that is characterised by dialogue. In this sense the name of Ram in Kabir's poetry expresses the essence of the essential human element and the entirety of existence (‘tihoon lok’): Kabir kahae main hathi gaya, kathi gaya Brahma Mahesh Rama nam tat saar hai, sab kahu updesh. Tat tilak tihun tak mein rama nam nij saar 4an Kabir mastak diya shobha adhik apaar Kabir says I told you, Brai thma and Mahesh told you, The name of Ram is the essence of all elements, this is the teaching The name of Ram is the three worlds, Since your servant Kabir has Brown so. (Gupta 1986; 7) essence of the tilak of the elements of the Put it on his forehead, the radiance has Rai , waite es real. Tn regard to this fori‘ oF Rani, female’ Kabir Sibancaeueae 8 Of sexual right or authority over Ram, acting The Erotic to the Divine 67 Kabir naina antari aaw tu, jyun hon nain jhapeun Na hon dekhun aur ko na tujh dekhan deun Kabir says, whenever I close my eyes, You come inside them. I will not see anyone else, nor will [ let You see them! (Gupta 1986: 35). And the metaphorical nature of this Ram makes him a basis for Kabir's radical critique of the social system. Within Kabir’s love-cognition, kamabhavana, Ramabhavana and samajabhavana become one in the same way that he (or rather she) wants to become one with Ram having ‘gone to bed’ with him. For the female Kabir, this very desire is the purpose of her very existence. Kabir expresses devotion toward Ram in the voice of an uninhibited woman expressing desire for an explicitly sexual union: Weh din kab awenge mai Ja karnai hum deh dhari hai milibo ang lagai Hon janun hilmil khelun, tan man pran samai Ya kamna havo parpuran, samrath ho Rama rai Ma, when will those days come, For which we were born? I will embrace Him, I know that I will embrace him without inhibition, with my heart, mind, life, Fulfil this desire, master Ram, You are he who gives strength. (Gupta 1986: 328) And immediately after the above comes this touching, intoxicating invitation: Balha aao hamare geh re Tumh bin dukhiya deh ve Sab koi kahe tumhari nari mo ko ih andeh re Ekmek ho se} na soven tab lag kaisa neh re Beloved, come to my home, Without you, my body pains. Everyone calls me your woman, but I have my doubts We haven't slept on the marital bed after becoming one, Until one does, how can there be love? (Guptal986: 328)68 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia ‘Everyone calls me your woman’, but without uniting with you physically, how will my doubts be erased? This sharp question put forward by the feminine Kabir is certainly a metaphor for spiritual practice in the eyes of the poet himself, but is it only a metaphor for the reader as well? If we discuss only the matter of metaphor, then Kabir’s Ram is the object of the natural desire of a woman and the desire too, in moments of love, to erase doubts about and vindicate feelings of one’s tight to ‘become one’. On the other hand, he is also a metaphor for the whole of existence: Phoolan mein jaise rahti baas, ghat ghat Govind Hari niwas Kahe Kabir mani bhaya anand, jagjiwan miliyo parmanand As fragrance resides in flowers, Hari-Govinda resides in every body Kabir says that my mind has become blissful, Thave found the Highest Joy and the Life of the World. (Gupta 1986: 371) This ultimate bliss, this fragrance that pervades the Life of the World, is the ultimate bliss of Kabir’s love. The sensibility of Kabir’s metaphors activates both the ‘erotic’ and the ‘transcendental’ in the mind of the reader; it makes possible this insight into the deep relationship of kamabhavana and Ramabhavana. The result of this insight is samajabhavana. From the point of view of the reader, all these of three emotions are the extension of his own human emotions. In such a case, what is so ‘otherworldly’ or ‘mystical’ about all of this? The mystery of Kabir’s ‘sadhana-oriented mysticism’ lies precisely in the assistance it provides in understanding the ‘mystery’ of both the manjivan (world of the mind) and jagjivan (life of the world) The key to this understanding lies in love alone: love illuminates Kabit's total existence—body and soul. In the light of this uninhibited love, unending union and the possibility of combination with one’s endearing husband appear and the inconceivable is made lucid: Kabir pyanjar prem prakasya jaga jog anant Sansha khuta such bhaya milya pyara kant Kabir says, this bo has been illumi cr poate dy een illumined by love, the endless yoga has The Erotic to the Divine 69 Bathing in the light of love, Kabir, in order to talk to the beloved inside himself, becomes a woman. The object of his love, like the ‘fragrance of the flower’, is pervasive in the Life of the World, At the same time, as female Kabir tells her ‘sakhi’ (female confidante), whoever realises the presence of Ram in themselves will never have to endure an empty bed: Sab ghat mera saiyan suni sej na koi Bhag tinhon ka he sakhi, jihi ghat pragat hoi My master dwells in all bodies, so no one’s marital bed is empty that person is fortunate, in whose body my master is revealed. (Gupta 1986: 87) This sadhana of desire of the fortunate one does not just address the confidante; it also calls out to Ram, calling him the husband's sister's brother (nanad ke bhai—in other words, the husband) in the unadulterated colloquial idiom of women: Ab mohi le chal nanad ke biz, apne desa In panchani mili looti hun kusnag aahi.badesa Oh brother of my nanad, take me away to your place, These people have looted me; I've been forced to live with scoundrels. (Gupta 1986; 153) Is this uninhibited femininity of Kabir merely a passing instance? Or is it the expression of a deeper insight? Is the problem one of ‘defending’ those sadhaks who take the form of women, or does it have to do with something else? In any case, the problem cannot be solved by simply calling this adoption of a woman’s form, ‘sadhana- oriented. mysticism’; we must instead delve into the mystery of why Kabir and other sadhaks do not manage to transpose the insight that they accumulate and display at the time of spiritual practice onto their Views of actual society as well. For some reason, their creative or Spiritual femininity cannot manage to transform itself into a feminine “nitique or representation of society. Thus, we see that the writer who looks though the eyes of a woman at the level of spiritual practice fails to look through the eyes of a woman at the level of social reality. Itis this failure that needs to be interrogated. The challenge is not in ‘defending’ or ‘criticising’; it is in opening “p the problems and possibilities of Kabir’s notion of love! And,WW EOSfOO || Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia | 70 The Erotic to the Divine m1 | as we have said, Kabir is not the only male sadhak who adopts the voice of a woman. oe In an important essay on the topic, ‘Men, Women, and Saints’, A. K. Ramanujan writes: ‘Of the thousand or so poems of Nammalvar, 270 of them are in female voices, (In this practice of taking on female Personae, he has classical precedents in cankam poetry, where male Poets frequently write in female voices.)’ (Ramanujan 1999: 291) Love symbolism was the cornerstone of southern Bhakti sensibility. There are many who dismiss pangs of separation in Kabir’s poetry as an unwelcome foreign influence, and there are those who just can’t stand or understand the term ‘vaishnava’, but scholars having a sense of the context of Bhakti know that to call oneself the ‘bride of Ram’ is an inheritance from southern Vaishnavism. This sense of inheritance was, and is, very much active in the traditional understanding of the evolution of Bhakti sensibility: It is due to this sense of inheritance that Kabir was credited with propagating Dravidian Bhakti throughout the world. In any case, Ramanujan pays close attention to the peculiarities of female sants together with the tradition of men taking the form of women, and underlines the attempt to ‘re-define identity’ in the poems of both: LThus, in the course of constituting or reconstituting themselves in this new way of being, men’itiay take on feminine role female personae and f I the house questing father’s) and a com rule after rule in men, women, an speak through year for their male god as women do for their may take on the characteristics of men: they leave for their’ personal god (not their husband's oF munity of their own’ choosing, in ways that shatter Manu's'code book, They become the third gender: sunt. (Ramanyjan 1909: 3017) lovers. Women saints It comes as i no su a tind "prise then that when dealing with the matter of lopting the role of “, i: e other than the @ woman, Ramanujan is reminded of non by men. Yet this does not drive women to curse them. Mira reports that ‘Ranaji gives me poison, and Mira only laughs’, but despite these types of attacks, Mira never calls all the men obstacles to spiritual practice. Instead she simply shrugs off these provocations, saying, ‘Ranaji, I like being given a bad name, whether in condemnation or in praise, I insist on taking my strange way!” Here is the paradox, peculiar to the sensibility of a male sant: tha on the one hand woman, whether ‘your own or another's’ is eibiddred] the greatest obstacle to spiritual practice, and then on the other th¢ male sadhak himself becomes a woman when engaging in that spiritual practice. In one direction we see that love for woman is accepted as the metaphor for the most serious of obstacles, and in the other direction the same love is made into the most beloved metaphor of uninhibited devotion. On one hand, Kabir warns sternly: Kabir nari parai aapni, bhugtya narakahi jayee Aag aag sab ek hai tamain haath na baahi Kabir says he who associates with a woman, whether his own or another's, is going to hell All fires are one; so don't burn your hand in it. (Gupta 1986: 69) And on the other hand that same Kabir, in the deepest moments of devotional fervour, becomes compelled to take the form of a woman in order to articulate his experience of love and devotional feeling: Tan rati kar man rati karihon, panch tat bararti Ramadev more pahunen aaye, main joban madmati Having let my body be absorbed Ilet my mind be absorbed The five elements take part in the marriage procession My groom Ramdev has come, I am intoxicated with youth. Mandir mahin bhaya ujiara, le sutin apna piv pyara Main re nirasi, je nidhi pai, humhin kaha yeh tumhin badai Kahe Kabir main kachhu na kinhan, sakhi suhaag Rama moki dina My dwelling has been made radiant; I have taken my dear beloved and gone to bed Thad become hopeless but this is the treasure I've found, In it lies your prestige, where’s mine?72 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia Kabir says, I didn’t do anything, Sakhi;* Ram made me a happily married woman. Gharnani lagi karon bariyai, prem prit rakhon urjhai It man mandir raho nit chokhe, hahe Kabir parahu mat dhokhe Grabbing your feet 1 will push myself on you, I won't let you go Be blissful in the dwelling of this heart, Kabir says don’t be fooled (by anyone else), (Gupta 1986: 140-41) How erotic Kabir’s language is in the above lines— ‘physical pleasure’ actually comes before ‘mental pleasure’! Not only that, we also see a sense of authority to forbid Ram to be deluded by other women’s designs—the admonitions of a possessive lover! And then later another intimately human sentiment: the anxiety and uncertainty of not knowing who among all these women who look the same will have the good fortune to become the swhagan (happily married woman) of Ram! In Kabir’s poetry, we see that there is indeed the updesh to condemn woman, and yet his notion of love also mocks that very maxim. It 8oes without saying that it depends upon you as an individual as to whether you learn from the passages of Kabir’s poetry that ‘the — = oe key “= bi or instead from: that sensibility and that ia ceeds od radiance to the dwelling of heart’, bring eae of male arrogance, and set aside one’s culturally toned psyche while enlightening the poet's (and hopefully the male listeners’ or readers’) creative feminini ubiuitearines - the presence of femininity within the male Smee eee the outcome of the selfinterrogation of the tobe Wei eit Carried Out by devotees ranging from Nammalvar coidlubded Sie Condemnation for woman born of his culturally vehy an Mint 1 adopts the voice of a woman and her Busan aetna eee ee This Rasa bedomes's iti Rare is the sensibility of sur ender. becomes the yety naine ent ‘or equalising social relationships—he (0 this restless spiritual search. In all of this, the chal i a totality of Ram: enge is to grasp this deep understanding of the Kabir khoji Rama ka gaya jo Singhal weep imi raha jo aawe parteet Rama to ghat bhitar hi ra The Erotic to the Divine 73 Kabir is the seeker of Ram, I went to the island of Singhal* Ram is found in the body of those, who feel him. (Gupta 1986: 131) The irony is that despite using this understanding to interrogate the hierarchy of the caste system, Kabir doesn’t manage to make the same interrogation of the gender hierarchy latent within patriarchal systems. His social criticism thus remains incomplete, and his insistence on condemning woman is the root of this incompleteness. This insistence creates a rift in one’s sensibility, and not only the sensibility of Kabir: there are many sadhaks like him who never tire of condemning the amorous woman in their sanskar-influenced spiritual maxims, but in the realm of poetry and ‘mystical’, spiritual practice never tire of taking the form of a woman to express their poetic interpretation of love. This type of paradox, this type of innerstruggle, is indeed the evidence of a deep insight into the nature of love achieved by poets through the natural (or ‘mystical’, if you like!) process of creating poetry. Mira and Mahadevi Akka don’t have to do separate sadhana in ortier to attain such an insight: they are already women in body, mind and society, as well as in poetry and spiritual practice. For males, however, a proper understanding of this concept of being ‘half woman in body’ is made difficult by various epistemologies in their own ways. A poet like Kabir can overstep these obstacles and obtain some understanding of this concept, at least on the level of sadhana—this is the possibility that Kabir represents. The limit he also represents, on the other hand, is that his femininity remains limited only to spiritual practice; it never manages to take the form of a ‘feminine discourse” on the social. Feminist analyses of civilisation have given the form of an organised discourse to the insights to be found within a social experience of femininity as well as provided further insights on the distinguishing features of ‘feminine’ love. While pursuing a deep re-assessment of social history, psychology and sexuality, feminist thinkers have developed a critique of sexual desire in which they have argued that the ‘male’ conception of love sees it as an adventure, a victory, whereas the ‘female’ conception of love sees it as life itself, in its entirety. And this schism is not limited to the love characterised by fidelity. Both ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ elements are active in the human consciousness, but in the sequence of the historical development of ‘personal property, family and the state’, this notion of ardhanariswar, the ‘halfwoman/hal£man’ nature of human beings was left behind.74 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia Thus, masculinity has become an ideal and femininity a sign of backwardness—a man’s being ‘effeminate’ is a cause for ridicule while ‘manliness’ in a woman is praised! In the prevailing notion of love that develops in a patriarchal society, the elements of supremacy and destruction (Thanatos) tend to be more active, while vigour and sensuality (Eros) are naturally less active. Even what we conceive of to be completely ‘individual’ love does not stand outside the discourse of social power; individual love as well, to some limit and in some form, nurtures the notion of gender supremacy that lies latent in patriarchal society. And it can just as easily challenge that notion. So in the sense of a wider social phenomenon, love has its own politics. This can be a politics of establishing supremacy on another through the interpolation of a particular gender identity, or it can be a politics of resisting this Kind of supremacy. In the powerful words of Germaine Greer: Much of the behaviour that we describe by the term is so far from benevolence, and so antisocial, that it must be understood to be inimical to the essential nature of love. Our life style contains more Thanatos than Eros, for egotism, exploitation, deception, obsession and addiction have more place in us than eroticism, joy, generosity and spontaneity. (Greer 1971: 144) ; Despite the limits imposed upon their consciousness by the schism between their notion of love and the inherited sanskars of patriarchal Society, the insight acquired by Kabir and other sadhaks is exceedingly {portant to understanding this fact that ‘in reality women and men aes different ways’ (Greer 1971). One of these ways sees love as an thas ure while the other sees it as the entirety of life itself. Taking Tor no account, how could a true devotee, trying to express hi anions eeotioe, ever choose a better metaphor than femininity, Temininig, kakae She Cabrel of life sett (Greer 1971)? Adopting Social norms ange, medium that, on the one hand challenges earns the other, can simultaneously give the ‘feminine at the same qa of being fortunate for receiving Ram's love while is also able to teach gerne 2 feeling of authority that the devotee » able to teach Ram how to love. This insight is not limited to any particular period, or to any region. Just as ‘the love of equals is @ The Erotic to the Divine 75 Woman is the future of man. That means that the world that was Snce formed in man’s image will now be transformed into the image , cold and metallic it of woman, The more technical and mechani becomes, the more it will need the type of warmth that only the woman can give it. If we want to save the world, we must adapt to the woman, let ourselves be led by the woman, let ourselves be penetrated by the Ewigweibliche, the eternally feminine! (Kundera 1991: 380) ) While critiquing Vichar ka Anant, Rajender Kumar rightly wrote that ‘Milan Kundera’s notion of the. “eternal feminine” is pervasive in Kabir’s poetry, but only as a metaphor rather than its object’ (Kumar 2000: 160). The question then is what relationship the choice of the metaphor has with the object of poetry and the consciousness of the poet. If the ‘notion of an “eternal feminine”’ had been more than a metaphor, if it had also become the object of Kabir’s poetry, then perhaps he would have been able to look at himself and society through the eyes of a woman in the realm of society, outside the limited scope of spiritual practice. But this was not the case—and so right here we see the rift in his sensibility; this is the limit of his notion of love. Nevertheless, the pervasiveness of femininity as a metaphor in his poetry suggests the possibilities of this notion of love. What we must ask is whether it’s important lies, be in the context of Kabir or in the context of our own lives and times, in trying to expand the possibilities of this love? Is it important to try to examine the relationship that develops between the discourse of the society and the discourse of love? Is it important to investigate the possibilities of a politics of love? seo Ve he genocide that occurred in the state of Gujarat in 2002 was mazing, not only for the horrific nature of its events—even more amazing than the violence itself was the evident social acceptance that this kind of violence receives. Though many have written on the Senocide, only one or two writers have raised the question of how the Politics of establishing violence and hate in the social consciousness and the dynamics they set up provide the context for such events. In this respect the comments of prominent human rights activist K Balgopal are extremely important. “ Balgopal’s distress begins with the context of the Gujarat genocide and extends all the way to the fundamental failure of leftist and76 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia other progressive intellectuals in this arena. His despair arises over the question of why leftist thought, whether it be in the context of Hindutva politics or Nazi politics, has remained uninterested in investigating the possibilities of the politics of love rather than the politics of hate: Can one teach love as easily as [hate]? Radical-minded people feel insecure about such questions, for they could be fatal to our utopian dreams. But while dreams are all right, and probably also necessary, we should have the honesty to pare them down to realistic dimensions. If hatred is so easy to build and love so difficult, and an uneasy tolerance the most we achieve when we work for love, how utopian can our dreams afford to be? This is, of course, a very big question. So big that leftist analysis of Nazism in Europe, of which there have been tomes upon tomes, never faced it honestly. Not even Erich Fromm, who came closest to looking it in the face but backed out in the last moment. (Balgopal 2002; 2117) The creation of hatred is so easy and ‘love is so difficult to obtain’ Kabir yeh ghar prem ka khala ka ghar nahin Sees utare hathi hare so paise ghar mahin. Kabir prem na kheton nipaje prem na haat bikaye Raja praja jis ruche sir de so le jaaye 5 base this is a house of love, not your aunt’s house! nly he who puts his head to the ground may enter Kabir says, love does not row in the field nor is it sold in the market A king, his subj ‘eine i shane or whoever likes, can give their head and take it Is ther i i . in Lehi cn lationship between that notion of love, whose absence in leftist discourse distri BoC ‘esses Balgopal so intensely, and the notion of OP ea which we have seen above to be 30 difficult 0 whlch gle sice as aes that there is a social facet to the impulse, she does not ming bonne’ in. girl of only seventeen years that mind being hanged for the crime of loving someone $ this love-impulse not have some social meaning also have some relevance for our progressive hatred is also ultimately an individual emotion, ‘Actionary but also progressive politics try to giv Outside the caste? Doe: as well? Does it not Sensibility? Like love, to which not only re The Erotic to the Divine 7 the form of a social force. We know that reactionary politics reshapes sexual desire and the experience of love into misogynist sanskars and oppressive structures. In this situation, what should be the attitide of progressive thinkers and progressive politics toward sexual desire and the emotion of love? This question becomes even more important in the context of Kabir. Various sorts of intellectuals are currently trying to pull one facet of Kabir’ sensibility—specifically his samajabhavana, or social criticism—into the service of their own projects. With equal intensity they and others are also attempting to push Kabir's kamabhavana and Ramabhavana to the margins. And we see that this type of politics is not limited to the context of Kabir; the problem arises from the complexity of sexual desire and ‘the difficulty of grasping love’. As active and eager as progressive thinkers seem to be, about turning the impulse of hatred into a social force, they seem to be just as indifferent towards forming an alternative discourse based on the impulse of love. Not only indifferent, but also suspicious about attempting to form such a discourse, or even downright hostile! In this regard, I have received the fruit of this hostility in a very personal way. In my article ‘Sudra-Pasu-Nari’, in Sanskriti: Varchasva aur Pratirodh (1995), I have written: Progressive politics and culture join themselves without hesitation to a programme of opposing tyranny. Cannot this same unhesitant relationship also be joined with a programme of advocating a love that challenges social norms? Cannot the natural love between woman and man, its memories circulating in folk memory and its creative ns be made the departure point for a new formation of social Is change really only about rejecting the present? If not, then can an alternative system rest only upon the mutual exchange of roles of the oppressors and oppressed? Is love merely an impulse between two individuals? Should a definite space not be seized in the world of thought in which to join the love of woman and man with wider social change? (Agrawal 1995: 68) ' put forth this matter again and again, in various different ways, in the above-mentioned book. The inconvenience that this insistence caused to progressive critics, became apparent at the public launch of the book and was educational for me, and worrisome as well. I was told extensively about the importance of hatred in the formation of Social forces; just as frequently I was told about doubts regarding the emotion of love. The proposal of ‘making a definite space in the world78 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia of thought for joining the love. of woman and man with wider social change’ was made fun of. Hearing and seeing all of this, a question arose in my mind like a flash of lightening, and that question is still lingering today despite the passing of ten years—why this much love for hatred? Why this much alienation from love? This problem was not limited. to. the speakers at that seminar And the ‘lack’ that we are observing is not only a lack of acceptance for perceptions of love, but also.a lack of a discourse of love. The hesitation that we see among progressive critics and thinkers is not about accepting the importance of love between woman and man, but rather about making a definite space in the world of thought for the joining of that love with a wider programme of social change. Their doubt is not about the importance of love in the form of a Personal impulse, but rather about the possibility of a politics based on this impulse—a politics based on love, aoe iso is abat the majority of progressive thinkers have accepted Prevailing social construction of natural sexual desire as the only Possible construction, and the the emotion of love This is the reason th: glorified in the name is left as personal, abs and bourgeois forms an alternative to the important enough to could be ‘fatal to our minded’ not contribu below in the words express the deepest 2002: 2117)? traditional, hegemonising discourse on as thus been accepted as a ‘natural’ discourse! at in the current epoch, ultra-conservatism is of love’s greatness, or else the question of love stract or un-graspable, or, at most, the feudal of love are criticised. Usually, the question of iscourse latent in these forms is not considered §ive attention to here or now: such a question utopian dreams’, Does this ‘fear of the radically- ite to the formation of the condition described of Roland Barthes, and does not this condition crisis of the entire human condition (Balagopal --- the lover's discourse i sc oth Surse is today of an extreme solitude. This discourse is spoken, perhaps. NESE gs thousands of subjects (who know: SPSS’ S@éS~Ss— ASSL The Erotic to the Divine 79 The crisis, which is expressed in the limitless loneliness of the lover's discourse, is the deepest crisis possible for both individuality and the social system; it is indeed the greatest challenge of the twentieth century. It is not a challenge to any one society—it is a challenge to all of human civilisation. The future of ‘our utopian dreams’ is dependent upon how we engage this ‘ungraspable-ness of love’ at both the level of discourse and the level of behaviour, How do we give a space to love in thought on social change—and to what degree do we manage to change the possibilities of these alternative notions of love into realities? To what degree do we manage to face the intellectual challenge of transforming the experience of love based on sexual desire and the primitive love-impulse into a transforming social force? To answer these questions, let us turn back to the nature of love in the poetry of Kabir and other bhakta poets. Even if there is no ‘actual’ object of love, no ‘worldly’ beloved, the human. who writes and traverses poetry creates an ‘otherworldly’ beloved in order to live and feel the impulse of love. The irrepressibility and unavoidability of the love-impulse in human beings make meaningless the division between the worldly and otherworldly beloved, between the real and the unreal. Call it ‘spiritual’ or ‘emotional’—the mystery of mysticism is essentially that within mystical experience, the dichotomy between the worldly and otherworldly persona of the beloved is left behind. What remains is only the irrepressible surge of love itself—the burning Power of desire and its pain. The distinguishing characteristic of Kabir is that he gives the form of socially absorbed, cognitive love to this irrepressible erotic impulse. Not only from the viewpoint of a poetic inner meaning, but also in the selfconsciousness of the poet, Kabir’s notion of love cannot be characterised as a socially indifferent kaya-sadhana (a spiritual practice which focuses on restraining the body and physical asceticism), but rather is.a provocation against the proponents of pre-ordained social norms and birth-ascribed identity markers. His personality as a poet is both introverted and extraverted at the same time—because his sensibility is the sensibility of the seamless continuity of kamabhavana, Ramabhavana and samajabhavana. This seamless continuity is that sky in which Kabir roams like a bird of flame. Burning his nest (which is made of the security and freedom from worry that pre-ordained identities and norms provide) with the flame of his own songs, and without the need for the refuge of some resting place of belief, Kabir makes his home in the middle of that seamless sky:80 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia Kabir anal akasha gahr kiya madhi nivantar baas Basudhe byom bigta rahe bin tha har biswas Kabir says, the bird of flame made the sky his home, the seamless eternal He exists beyond the earth and heave i eavens, without a resting pla na ens, without a resting place n which lies ae now turn back to the current state of the lover's discourse. er pursuing the thoughts outlined above, Barthes writes: ou : A 4 4 tae discourse is thus driven by its own momentum into the ackwater of the “unreal”, exiled from all gregarity, it has no recourse re ; Bs: 0 ecome the site, however exiguous, of an affirmation. (Barthes ee lies in the way he transforms the Tove that has ier wand ea oes of the ‘unreal’ into a yardstick to evaluate exiguous—on ate aad site for such an ideal need not be all that on the expansion of sane that we too make some attempt to take taking the time to seri fat hse within the realm of our sensibility, After Kabir, the Kitt y interrogate and engage Kabir himself. adoption of ae seca of the social on the ideal of love and the essential marker of nir; = oe in spiritual practice became the this tradition, the imporan hakti sensibility. However, throughout ate eee work of transforming creative femininity Instead a’ rift at on the social does not manage to occur ‘iti ele’ coun garireniaee form—and as a result social criticism indeed ‘criticised, but an ans incomplete. The hierarchy of caste is surfaces—despite the i analysis of the hierarchy of gender never throughout the ‘eatin been of ‘femininity’ in spiritual practice Paltu (in the nineteenth se Dadu (in the sixteenth century) to saints and poets who, ex Bei In fact, it is striking that the same Keine bok alee ee ee ee take the form of a womay ant BuisiNiekicy us their own’ when ‘they the agency of woman im th lemselves, cannot manage to recognise themselves into ‘Ram's hoe Social context. Those sants who turn the level of social experience, may the context of bhakti cannot, on Suffering, “being the natal ip nse RO tO feel distressed at their lot of Women!” In fact, their sanskar tells them: women dese: tve suffering si more so if they insist on cite bret Bereta they are women, and The Erotic to the Divine 81 This is the saddest limitation of their notion of love. Along with explicit instructions to condemn woman, this limit seems to give some people the opportunity to use Kabir and other sants in support of their misogynist stupidities and hateful fantasies. They believe that they can say that if the sants condemn woman, then the woman must indeed be at fault. Such people far from criticising the sants for this, go on not only ‘defending’, but eulogising them, as after all, ‘woman is the original sinner,’ That is to say, a woman’s beauty, her sensuality and her sexuality are not ‘her own’ and cannot possibly be the objects of praise. These attributes and qualities are actually the manifestations of her ‘existentially sinful’ nature. But Kabir himself adopts these sins when he adopts the form of a woman in his poetry to express love, and therefore how can he himself possibly be the object of any praise according to the logic of these misogynists? We see in Kabir's notion of love the possibility of a cognitive act on the basis of which the theoretical development of love in the form of a force for social change can take place. Kabir's compulsion to take a female form and his femininity in spiritual practice appear to us as questions posed to his sanskar-influenced condemnation of woman. The present need then is to make these questions more theoretically dense and discursively prominent. The need is also to bring this femininity in. spiritual practice to the level of feminine discourse on the social. It is mot necessary that this work which Kabir himself was not able to accomplish in his time should remain unfinished in our time. Males must allow the ‘eternal feminine’ to pervade themselves, and this can only become possible when men not only become sensitive to the ‘eternal’ feminine, but also start a dialogue with contemporary femininity—when they become eager to join the discourse and practice of the feminine in spiritual endeavour with the discourse and practice of the feminine in the social realm. This is a fundamental moral paradigm for the behaviour of any male, be it in the time of Kabir, in our time, or at any time. Notes 1. Sakhi literally means a witness, Sant poets like Kabir use this term for their couplets, which are otherwise also known as dohas 2. Everyone is familiar with Acharya Ram Chandra Shukla’s distaste towards the ‘spiritual mysticism’ of the nirgun sans, which he assumed to be ‘inspired by the Sufi's convention of viral’. With that same kind of distaste, Acharya Vishwanath Prasad Mishra describes the difference belween82 Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia the virah expressed in folksongs and that of the nirgun sants: ‘Even in folk songs virah has been expressed in its natural form, but in [the writings of] Sufi and nirgun sants, becoming an element of spiritual practice, virah becomes other-worldly. ‘Other-worldly’ in the sense that it is related to the element of the transcendental, and its expression too is exaggerated, itself being other-worldly.” Hindi Sahitya ka Atit, Part 1, New Delhi: Vani Prakashan, 1994, p. 139. 3. A sakhi is a female companion of a woman, and by Kabir’s time was a popular convention in epic poetry, used as a foil to which the heroine could voice her thoughts, 4. In the epic Sufi poem of Muhammad Jaysi, the Padmavat, the hero, Ratan Sen, travels to the island of Singhal to search for his beloved Padmini 5. 1am here using the term ‘ feminine discourse’ as opposed to ‘feminist discourse’ in a sense similar to that used by Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. References Agrawal, Purushottam. 1995. Sanskriti: Varchaswa aur Pratirodh, New Delhi: Radhakrishna Prakashan, —— 2000. Vichar ka Anant, New Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan. ——. 2004. ‘Seeking an Alternative to Religion Itself: The Sadhana of Kabir’, Thematology: Litertary Studies in India, ed. Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Kolkata: Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur Universi PP- 208-29, Ty,,2009. Akath Kahani Prem Ki: Kabir ki Kavita aur Un ka Samay, New Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan. Balgopal, K. 2002. ‘Reflections on Gujarat Pradesh of Hindu Rashtra’, Economic ‘and Political Weekly, vol. 37, no, 2, 1 June, pp. 2117-19. SS re 1978. A Lover's Discourse: Fragments, London: Penguin Gorn Sunder. 1928. Kabir Granthavali, Varanasi: Nagari Pracharini Das, Greer, Germaine. 1971. The Female Eunuch, New York: McGraw-Hill. Cee Mata Prasad. 1986. Kabir Granthuali, Allahabad: Sahitya Bhavan. mar, Rajendra. 2000. ‘Sanskriti Ke Sarjanatmak “Swa” ka Abhigyan’ (in Kung), Alochna, October-December, pp. 155-60. 4 aie Mian} hops Immortality, New Delhi: Rupa and Company. ieee ~ ss Prasad. 1994, Hindi Sahitya ka Atit, Part 1, New Ramanujan, A. K. 1999. The Collected Oxford University Press, Schimmel, Anne Marie, 1975. My Secret ystical Dimensic 1 Hill: University of North Caran Ba Dimensions. of Istam, Chapel Essays of A. .K. Ramanujan, New Delhi: Dy Ask Not the Caste of the O Who is Wise EXPLORING ARTICULATIONS OF ‘RELIGIOUS’ IDENTITY IN MALIK MUHAMMAD JAYAST’S PADMAVAT Ipshita Chanda D NZIL_IBBERTSON, COMMISSIONER OF THE 1881 census in Punjab, charged with categorising the population of India into neat Cartesian slots for the convenience of the British administrators and colonial lawmakers, found himself at a loss, commenting: The observances and beliefs which distinguish the followers of the several faiths in their purity are so strangely blended and intermingled that it is often impossible to say that one prevails rather than the other or to decide in what category the people should be classified. (Khan 2004: 4) Yet a little more than fifty years hence, the subcontinent would be divided on the basis of faith, and blood would flow in the name of Sod. Apart from the very thrust of Ibbertson’s comment, we might note that he feels that the faiths in their purity are intermingled—the ideas of hybridity, of syncretism that characterise our modern ways of thinking about, and understanding cultural contacts and their Consequences upon host and recipient cultures seem inadequate simply because they begin with the assumption of discernible and definite boundaries. The evidence however reveals different realities, often puzzling and not always easy to unravel. Relations of domination that are seen to characterise contact situations post-colonially are not necessarily the only possible configurations that can occur in those situations, and thinking about contact, rather than assimilation or appropriation might help us er Conceive of this possibility. Assuming that this historically produc Notion of contact is essentially and ontologically linked ee Power without exception will lead us to lose our sensitivity to this