Poetry is essentially linked with the stirrings of imagination. An imaginative reconstruction of whatever a poet chooses or is compelled to choose forms the bedrock of poetry. Otherwise religious treatises or medical prescriptions traditionally found in verse in our literate culture will probably be impressive and useful specimens of poetry which they are not.

Discovering disorder in order or order in disorder through the power of imaginative faculty has been a divinely trait associated with poets throughout ages for the reasons right and wrong. But that in no way prevents you from killing the poets for their ‘bad verses’. Bad poets in fact are like false prophets who pretend or claim to be what they are not. And sadly in every age you find bad poets galore. That’s why a few poets survive the ravages of time who we treat as our classical literary assets.

There is another dimension to the phenomenon not fully explored; why do we find such a disparity between the number of male and female poets in the literary history of diverse societies spread across time and space? Is it something that has to do with gender? Obviously not per se though the perception of difference might have been an important factor.

A female despite gender differences shares with the male what makes the both quintessentially human. So the negligible number of women who took to the stage of poetry is largely an outcome of social structures that have shaped and de-shaped human societies in their torturous evolutionary processes spanning aeons.

Women being confined largely to homes and allowed only to do ancillary work in the production process had hitherto a defined role. Childbearing and management of household were touted as ultimate accomplishments women were basically thought to be capable of in a social structure underpinned by rigid patriarchy that carved male and female roles in a manner that defined them as if they were mutually exclusive.

The perception of difference was no doubt rooted in certain facts noticed in day to day life. Women weren’t apparently as tough physically were men. During their menstrual periods and pregnancies they were further handicapped in physical terms. This apparent handicap was wrongly considered as an irrefutable sign of woman’s congenital fragility which helped reduce her into a child and slave that needed to be protected and disciplined. So the difference played quite a negative role obfuscating the fact that what was perceived as a weakness was female strength as it helped mankind to survive as species in an environment not very conducive to human growth and flourishing. The net result of this historical development is that we find a few women in the bygone ages who took to creative expression such as poetry.

History of Punjabi literature is no exception as we encounter few women as classical writers and poets in its long trajectory spreading over one thousand years. Piro Preman, Sahib Devi, Daya Bai, Sehjo Bai, Narang Devi, Mukhfi, Phaphal Khatun, Hifzani Baloch, Jiwan Khatun Nikammi, Ayesha Bibi, and Bhagwan Devi aka Bhagwan Kaurare some of the women mentioned as poets. The most prominent among the female poets of the 19th century was Piro Preman, a powerful woman, who defied the tradition and had the courage to say no to what was repressive and oppressive in a patriarchy driven society.

Piro Preman [1810-1872] was born in a Muslim family in Gujranwala. In her youth she eloped with a Fakir who seduced her. The Fakir died soon afterward leaving the young woman at the mercy of circumstances at a tender age. Stigmatised and disgraced she could not return to her parents. She instead came to Lahore and was forced to seek shelter in the Red-light area of Lahore as a Nautch girl. She also had a short-lived relationship with General Elahi Bux.

Equally reviled by Muslims and caste-stricken non-Muslims, she aspired for an altogether different life. “I long to go to the unseen land / is there someone who could be of any support,” she says in one of his lyrics. She happened to come across Sadhu Ghulab Das who founded a spiritual sect of his own. She was bewitched by Ghulab Das’s presence and vision, and joined the Sect with an unprecedented zeal. She moved to his monastery at Chathiyan Wala, close to Kasur, to be ensconced as a beloved devotee for rest of her life.

Here again Piro had to face the jealousy of co-disciples who tended to treat her as a fallen woman. She like iconoclastic Bulleh Shah rejecting the straitjacket of caste, creed and gender insisted to be accepted purely as human. The very rejection of defined role of caste, creed and gender formed the core of her spiritual and poetic vision that put her in the league of major classical poets and saints. “Lord, I am beyond caste / neither Hindu nor Muslim / I am beyond birth and death / neither a woman nor a man / limitless beyond limit”.

She avers that she is different from what she appears to be. “The topknot and the sacred thread [Janeu] are signs of being Hindu? [There is] nothing in it/ what is it for woman who has neither of the two”, she questions. Her poetry is a testimony to the human sufferings especially of woman who has to fight the triple oppression of caste, class and gender in an obnoxiously stratified culture that has an intrinsic tendency to glorify the vestiges of the dead past with the insidious intent of controlling the present that would turn hideous. The way forward for her is the great Sadh/ Sufi spiritual praxis that not only defines our intellectual ethos but also points to building a future premised on the human qualities of individuals, not the trappings extraneous to authentic existence.

Piro Preman epitomises exhilarating and challenging mix of spiritualism and feminism, an oddity rarely found in our intellectual and cultural life. Her salutary existential experience made her implacable enemy of religious hypocrisy, gender discrimination and social subterfuge. “In Punjabi literature of nineteenth century, Piro is a powerful voice of rebellion”, writes Professor Sukhdev Singh in his well-researched article on Piro. Life and poetry of Piro show how things turn into their opposites; sacred becomes profane and profane sacred. What is passed on by tradition as sacred proves to be profane and what is perceived as profane in the quest of emancipation emerges as sacred. 

— soofi01@hotmail.com