It is a paradox that a poet who never married nor had a woman in his life composed a tale that became an iconic love story. This very fact may give us some clue to unfold the mystery of creative process. Absence of love or unrealised love may help a poet more to discover the mundane and transcendental secrets of the phenomenon. Ever present absence of something essential creates angst that may put a creative person on an un-chartered course, leading to a socio-psychic area rarely explored but pregnant with meanings, imagined and unimagined.

Waris Shah (1722-1798), like Homer and Shakespeare, worked on given story and sprung a master piece but also as was the case with them, he made his story the saga of his people that became synonymous with the soul of the society he was a part of. In his creative process dealing with the particular he created universal and focusing on the concrete ended up with the abstract.

Waris Shah took the popular love story and undoubtedly built on what Damodar Gulati and Madho Lal Hussain had made it to stand for. But what distinguished him from his predecessors was his unique imagination that created a broad new context for his retelling of the tale. This context was the imaginative reconstruction of complex agrarian society based on the historical reality of last 5000 years in the ‘land of five rivers’ called Punjab. Placed in such a context the love story assumed a rather different symbolic significance, it became a chronicle of heroic individuals in conflict with a well-established hierarchical society, representing historical forces of emancipation which perpetually keep erupting. To get some sense of how a love story is transformed into something far bigger it suffices to say that waris Shah’s protagonists, Heer and Ranjha come into conflict with all the institutions; social and official, religious and secular in their unending ordeal, exposing the reality of the traditional and the sacred.

Young Ranjha is not treated as their equal by his elder brothers after the death of their father who did not love them less but loved the youngest more, shattering the myth of family that traditionally stands for love and caring. Ranjha is denied his fair share of the ancestral property. “So they (Ranjha’s brothers) sent for the Qazi and the assembly of elders. They bribed the Qazi and the good land was give to them, and the barren and inhospitable land was given to Ranjha---“. State and society openly defy the principles of justice and fair-play that pushes Ranjha to the edge. Leaving his home and property he embarks on a journey that has no destination. In search of shelter he goes to a mosque to spend his first night like a lowly traveler. Waris Shah juxtaposes the aesthetic richness of the mosque against the utterly soulless rituals of its occupant, the Mullah, who is absolutely devoid of compassion for the people he is supposed to guide in the matters of faith. The Mullah seeing Ranjha says, “Who is this infidel with long hair? This is no place for rogues. Cut your long hair so that you may be acceptable in God’s sight”. Ranjha retorts “You have a long beard like a venerable Sheikh, yet you behave like a devil. Why you send innocent travelers and poor Fakirs like me away? You sit in the pulpit with the Quran in front of you, yet all this is your cunning trap ---”.

Luddan, the sailor, representing the cut-throat mercantile class, refuses to let penniless Ranjha enter his ferry who wants to cross the river in a bid to be away from the hurtful view of his ancestral home. “He who is for yonder shore, let him pay his pence. Him who pays his pence, we will take across; even though he may be a dacoit or a thief. We will not repeat his name, but we chase away all beggars and Fakirs like dogs. Those who attempt to enter our boat forcibly, we throw then into the river----“.

When parents of Heer get the inking of socially undefined relationship between her and Ranjha, they decide to arrange her marriage. Here again Qazi is employed as a ploy. He, with all his persuasive arsenal of religious logic, twisted and false, designed to serve the vested interests of upper class, tries to persuade Heer to agree to the marriage proposal. Religion for him is a matter of opportunistic convenience not a question of fairness and justice. The Qazi advises Heer thus: “Child, with all the gentleness we give you counsel---It is not becoming for the daughter of Chuchak to talk to cowherds and penniless coolies---Turn your spinning wheel, and sing the merry songs of Chenab---“. When Heer talks back, the Qazi threatens her, “If we were to condemn you, you will be done to death at once. If evildoers are killed, God does not avenge their death”. When Heer refuses to accept Khera as her husband, Qazi again thunders, “Do the bidding of your parents and accept the khera as your husband. Are you queen of Jamshid or the daughter of Nadhu Shah that we shall be afraid to tell you the truth? I shall beat you with the whips of Sharia---“.

Finally Heer leaving her in-laws, the Kheras, runs away with Ranjha. Both are captured close to river Sutlej in the vicinity of a town called Qabula and are presented in the court of the Raja who refers the case to the Qazi. When Ranjha claims that Heer is his wife, the Qazi says, “Fakir, have you got any witnesses? Without witnesses to the marriage, she can be no wife”. Ranjha pleads his case, “Listen to my words, you who know the law and the principles of the religion. On the day our souls said yes, I was betrothed to Heer. In the Tablet of Destiny, God has written the union of our souls. What need have we of earthly love when our souls attained the divine love?” The Qazi is not convinced with his otherworldly logic and says, “Speak the truth and have done with these falsehoods. Give up your evil ways or you will taste my whip.” So he hands over Heer to the Kheras.

Waris Shah’s overriding concern is not the happenings but rather the ways in which happenings happen. His expose, complete and devastating as shown above briefly, betrays a malady that had effected all the institutions of the society; secular and religious. They are thoroughly corrupt, decadent and regressive, serving the interests of status quo. So he is not interested, it seems, to simply tell the story as it was already well-known. He tells it with a difference. He himself hints at it at the start, “Friends came up with a request; let us compose the love story of Heer afresh.” What is fresh about his narrative is his brave endeavour to evolve a popular discourse which critically examines every aspect of life in a society suffering from social and religious rigidity but faced with political anarchy unleashed by historical forces and the invaders like Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah that made the fate of individual and collective uncertain. Waris Shah with a unique sense of selection placed the story in a new context that enabled him to create a critical narrative aimed at debunking the elite inspired moribund discourse underpinned by reactionary notion of traditionalism.

Note: The translations used are from the book ‘Waris Shah: The Adventures of Hir and Ranjha” by Charles Fredrick Usborne (1874-1919). — soofi01@hotmail.com

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August 2 - 2013

The social and intellectual discourse Waris Shah confronts in 18th century is defined by certain visible features; sanctity of class and caste, veneration of patriarchic family and emphasis on evolving an exclusive Muslim identity in a pluralistic society. His protagonist Ranjha quietly but quite firmly raises the class question through the choices he makes. He comes off an affluent land owning family but gives up his property rights and proudly stands dispossessed as a mark of peaceful protest against the system that deprives him of his due share, exposing the perfidy of his brothers, the Qazi and the village elders who represent society, religion and the state.

Disinherited, all Ranjha has is a piece of bamboo; a flute that stands out as a metaphor of a new world evoked in a dream-like sound. “With a flute under his arm, he started his journey, forgetting his home and land”. Cut off from his family and class he experiences the present as a lowly mortal with bleak future prospects. After meeting Heer, he accepts a job reserved for the poorest of the poor; he becomes a ‘Chaak’, the herder of buffalos that places him at the lowest rung of social hierarchy. “The herd belongs to my father but you the herder belong to me”, Heer spells out the terms and conditions of his job. Ranjha with stoic courage is ready to suffer all the rigors of being a social unequal of Heer to evolve a human relationship that emerges at the end as an ultimate symbol of gender equality. The relationship in fact reflects, to the great dismay of the traditionalists, the reversal of gender roles, making woman more dynamic than man. Heer through out the story has the initiative; she is the subject not the object, she is the leader not the lead. She knows the ways of the world as much as those of love. If Ranjha by becoming a worker rejects the constraints of his class, she too renounces her upper class privileges with her conscious decision to fall (in fact stand) for a man not her equal in social terms. Waris Shah in no uncertain terms expresses that one cannot have an authentic love relationship in a society based on human inequality born of economic and political coercion. Love is a choice made in freedom regardless of class and caste norms. Its essence in reality lies in defiance of narrow parameters designed by historically created hierarchical structures to control the imperatives of human potential.

The intellectual and social discourse in 18th century which justified the class distinctions as a social regulator was accorded metaphysical sanctity by ruling elite -- both the Muslims and the Hindus -- not withstanding their differences in faith. Waris Shah debunks this sacred myth, exposing the social regulator for what it is; a lever of social control used by upper crust to conceal and justify its excesses in an exploitative socio-economic system.

The second significant element of the discourse is the venerated patriarchic structure that seems to stand eternally stable on the unquestioned and unquestionable authority of the male elder or patriarch as a custodian of customs and norms. The head has to be male as he has come through a historical process to symbolise the power, physical initially, as a result of his bio-physical features which are different from those of female. The patriarch has an intrinsic incapacity to square the reproductive power of female, under-rated as it has been, with the physical power of male in a society that has not outgrown the confines of animal kingdom where instinctive reliance on force is a natural mode of existence. Hence the more the family is patriarchal, the more it is animalistic in the sense that it is not fully humanised entity informed by ethical consciousness. Heer refuses to submit to that patriarchal authority that in spite of having an emotional aura, is indifferent to the conscience and consciousness of woman, dictates her fate in accordance with the politico-economic needs of clan and family. “As wine-bibbers cannot desert the bottle, as opium-eaters cannot live without opium, so I cannot live without Ranjha,” says Heer when confronted by her father.

The last but not the least element of 18th century discourse is faith and politics driven search of exclusive Muslim identity by religious orthodoxy supported by a strong section of ruling class of foreign origins despite the historical fact of the Muslims being a minority in a society that has been pluralistic in its nature since the time immemorial. It is quite ironic that those who make out their faith as a mark of social distinction under the Muslim rule treat the convert Muslims having local roots as “Razeel” the riff-raff, devoid of dignity. Waris Shah not only accepts plurality or diversity but also indirectly celebrates it. ‘Jog’ (renunciation) forms an integral element of his narrative and becomes the way that leads to Ranjha’s meeting with Heer after her forced marriage, reminding us of a long standing spiritual tradition that has its origins in our Buddhist and Hindu past. The poet whose name suggests respectable Arabian ancestry owns our non-Muslim spiritual heritage as much as our Muslim mysticism.

Waris Shah is the most beloved of the poets of the Punjab because on the one hand he brings on to the cultural stage the protagonists who defy the class oppression and gender inequality and on the other portrays a holistic picture of society with all its conflicts, contradictions and complexities. No poet before or after him has grasped the essence of people’s culture and mass psyche the way he has. The socio-natural landscape he describes, when Ranjha after a night stay leaves the mosque at dawn, becomes an eternally haunting image of village morning in the Punjab:

“With the bird-song travelers take to the path and churners shake the churns

Those who enjoyed the pleasures of the beds (with their partners) run to the stream to wash their bodies clean”.

Waris Shah is acknowledged by the people and the poets as a superb craftsman with an unusually fecund imagination who remains unequalled in the history of Punjabi literature. Like all great poets he is master of the language. He knows the secret world of the words, choosing at will to reveal what is hidden and to hide what is already revealed. He can come up with the strangest of compound words and phrases and yet make them sound perfectly natural. He has such a firm grasp of the language that he can afford to borrow freely from Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit and Sadh Bhasha. He can make the borrowed words a part of the Punjabi language with no fear of burdening it with what otherwise is thought to be unwanted alien influence by the purists. He was perhaps conscious of what he had done with the story and the language. He started composing the story, as he tells the reader in the beginning, at his friends’ request but at the end throws a challenge: “Let the poets judge my verse, I have walked my horse in the mart”. Mian Mohammad Buksh, one of the great poets of 19th century, gifted with a formidable literary skill, while commenting on classical poets says:

“Waris Shah is the lord of verse, who can find fault with him It is beyond my grasp to point the finger at his words”.

It can safely be claimed that in order to know Waris Shah you have to know Punjab and to know Punjab you have to know Waris Shah.