Ahmed Shah ransacked Lahore and then made it a launching pad for further attack deep into the empire taking on the demoralised and poorly led Mughal armies, unstoppable rising Sikhs and formidable Marathas.

The strategy designed by Nadir Shah and later followed by Ahmed Shah was not to hold India for long. It rather revealed their policy of ‘invade, plunder and return’ which wreaked havoc as it prompted them to go for maximum plunder and loot in the shortest possible time.

When Heer and her friends return to their places after vandalizing Kaido’s hut, Waris uses the following metaphor to depict the ferocity of the assault; “[Ahmed] Shah’s troops after ransacking Mathura strode back to Lahore”. And this is how Kaido bitterly complains to the assembly of elders about the assault on his hut by women; “robbers carrying out their raids loot the country while they [girls] have looted my robe from me”.

The utter helplessness of forlorn Ranjha in the wake of Heer’s marriage with Khera is shown thus; “a new commander has taken the charge, no one cares any longer to frequent Ranjha”. The dialogue between Sehti and Ranjha turned Yogi is risqué, bawdy and loaded with sexual innuendos with no holds barred. We witness a nasty scene when Sehti in a fit of fury bashes Ranjha Yogi along with her friends; “they decimated him with churns and smashed his head with milk containers/ exactly like Abdul Samad Khan who mustering his forces fought Nabob Hussain Khan at Chunian”.

In another stanza we have this spectacle; “they [young women] plundered the Yogi like the bands which looted the Punjab”. Now these bands Waris referred to were peasants and land holders who rose in revolt against the back-breaking royal taxes under the command of Sikh warlords and laid waste to countryside. They were finally subdued by Maharaja Ranjit Singh in early nineteenth century with an astute political strategy.

Ranjha goes to see his beloved Heer, now married against her will, exhibiting an air of expectancy; “beside himself with happiness, he comes around as if he is the new governor of Lahore”. Governor of Lahore held important position during the Mughal era because of city’s geographical and strategic location. He was expected to act as a bulwark against incursions and invasions from the west and north west. Abdul Samad, mentioned above, was one of the governors of Lahore. In her never-ending argument which is more like some rigmarole Sehti hints at her own immense power thus; “no one can match the perseverance of buffaloes, no regime can rival the Babur’s rule over India and Punjab”.

Unfazed by Ranjha Yogi’s threats and apparent miraculous power, Sehti declares emphatically; “like defiant Dipalpur garrison we must rebel and dig here our flag-bearing pole”. Dipalpur is an ancient town on the bank of the River Sutlej south of district Okara. It has been an important fort in the past especially during the Sultanate and Mughal eras. It had been a site of many a battle in its long history.

Sehti, after having made peace with Ranjha, arranges a rendezvous of the lovers and advises Heer like a typical traditional woman; “with your offerings be quick to meet with him as his subject, beware, the [garrison] commander is here after having been reinstated”.Women, known to Heer, after her sexual union with Ranjha in the garden, confront her and take vicarious pleasure by graphically evoking the salacious aspects of the erotic encounter in detail. Their overpowering voyeuristic kind of interest in the lovers’ erotic life paints a stunning landscape studded with uninhibited images of lasciviousness. They are absolutely uninhibited in their vivid imaginative reconstruction of the encounter: “the governor beseeching the fort with cannons had the subjects lined up…/Rajputs fought with scimitars in the battle, in the vanguard the minstrel sang his songs…/Regime changed hand; today Qandharis have taken over Punjab / someone snatched the bloom of your youth just as Hanuman, the monkey king, demolished the Lanka’s terraces”. The poet effortlessly floats between history and mythology but all the metaphors have something in common; violence.

One wonders why these violent metaphors have been employed to paint a scene of consensual sexual activities of consciously defiant man and woman which has little to do with aggression. One explanation could be that it’s persons other than the protagonists whose imagination is uncontrollably stirred by the news of lovers’ erotic encounter and they conceive the act as a kind of war between two larger-than-life individuals. The tendency may hint at the general psychological make-up of non-heroic traditional women who face sexual violence inside and outside the marriage. They might have been conditioned to imagine sexual interaction as violence prone. Anyhow epic lovers stand in popular imagination as epitome of ultimate erotic and sexual power.

But one must also take into account the other dimension mentioned in the beginning; reflection of times or zeitgeist. It won’t be out of place to point to highly critical remarks Waris Shah passes about his times which saw some chaotic but fundamental transformations in India including Punjab. Waris Shah writes about the year he completed his tale with a sense of loss. It was the year, he says; “when Jats [farmers] came to be chiefs, each household became a government unto itself / noblemen stand ruined, menials flourishing and land holders in full bloom / thieves are chiefs, harlots virtuous, demon’s gang has multiplied four-fold--”. It wasn’t usual poetic cribbing about the present that had nothing to offer except pain if we take into account the epoch-making events that took place in the century the poet lived in.

Imagine the broad scene; decadent Mughal structure teetering on the brink of collapse, furious Marathas running amok, peasantry in revolt in Punjab, Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah with their mercenary armies striking at will with cold ferocity. It was a power play in its naked form with implications for the people whose present was frighteningly anarchic and future dark wrapped in uncertainty.

Waris Shah despite failing to appreciate the nature of popular uprising in Punjab was prompted by the spectacle to create his own meanings of expressions of power he found in the world of mythology and the course of history. He employed the unmasked meanings to build and strengthen his own narrative through exploring the dynamics of power which had an uncanny capacity to unmake and remake individual and social life of his times. With his unfettered imagination he turns the history of power into power of history. The phenomenon seems to have permeated his entire literary tour de force which comes up as a retelling of the legend as well as a counter narrative challenging and debunking the given ideal of life in a society based on hierarchies. 

— soofi01@hotmail.com