By Ashfaque Naqvi

Source: Dawn Karachi Edition

When I went to attend a function on Punjabi poetry arranged by the Lahore Arts Forum in the Model Town Library last Thursday, I prayed to God that it was not about modern Punjabi poetry. It is just unfortunate that I have hardly ever seen anything worthwhile produced by a poet in Punjabi. Most of them seem to be engaged in versifying and doing nothing better.

I heaved a sigh of relief, however, when Prof Gilani Kamran started speaking about classical sufi poetry. He regretted at the outset that enough people had not read that poetry and hence were not able to appreciate the creative imagination of those poets nor understand the depths inherent in their poetry. Due to the limited time at his disposal, the professor could only talk about some salient features of the poetry of Baba Farid, Shah Husain and Bulleh Shah.

First in the line of the great Punjabi sufi poets was Baba Farid (d. AD 1265). A widely travelled person, he was proficient in Arabic, Persian and Turkish. Despite that, after settling down at Ajodhan on the banks of the Sutlej, he adopted the folkloric media of oral poetry and recited shalokas in the local dialect. It did not take long for him to be accepted as a sufi saint of the masses.

He set up a Jamaat Khana at Ajodhan which became a meeting place for people of different sects and religions to indulge in a free exchange of views. His fame attracted Nizamuddin (Aulia) who came down from Delhi to become his disciple. The respect in which he was held remained alive even after his death and it is said that a person like Taimur put away his sword and presented himself at his shrine.

It is now accepted that Baba Farid was the person who put Punjabi on the course of becoming a major literary language and then it was Shah Husain who brought it alive. Prof Gilani Kamran emphatically said that evening that in the 11th century, no English poet wrote anything comparable to Farid's poetry.

Shah Husain (d. 1599) was a humanist. Rejecting retrogressive thinking, he advocated broadmindedness and liberalism thereby spreading the message of love and communal harmony. It was he who laid the foundation of the anti-orthodox temperament in Punjabi poetry. Unlike Persian, the imagery used by Shah Husain in his poetry has local references.

Explaining a poem by Shah Husain, Prof Gilani Kamran said that the nine doors he has referred to were the human faculties - eyes, ears, etc, - which remained open all the time but, unfortunately, the tenth i.e. the mind, was closed. He said it was imperative to keep it open as well as it was the door through which the Beloved or the Divine Being entered.

Talking about Bulleh Shah (1680-1753), Prof Kamran said that he was like the mystics who believed in retreat from life because of the risks involved and believed in only guarding divine truth. He was a rebel and his most memorable lines are those which are a direct attack on the orthodoxy. In fact, no other Punjabi poet has attacked hypocrisy as effectively as Bulleh Shah.

It sounds odd but the fact remains that during their lifetime Baba Farid, Shah Husain and Bulleh Shah were not owned by the Muslims. Farid's poetry was recovered from the Granth Sahib and the most reliable versions of the poetry of Shah Husain and Bulleh Shah were in Gurmukhi.

Farid was the first malamati poet who expressed self-doubt. Bulleh Shah raised it to a level that no poet, even of the Bhakti tradition, could rival him. In ki janan mein kaun, he employs the technique of negative identification in a philosophic manner.

Space prevents me from writing more on this brilliant lecture by Prof Gilani Kamran. His elaboration of the discursive and pictographical dimensions of Bulleh Shah's poetry was illuminating.

The College Teachers' Association of Lahore has become active of late. The other day it arranged a function in the lecture hall of the MAO College on the history of Muslim liberalism in South Asia. The speaker was Kazy Javed, local director of the Pakistan Academy of Letters.

Tracing 700 years from the time of Syed Ali Hajveri (Data Sahib) up to Dara Shikoh, the speaker said that all Muslim intellectuals, sufis and poets had struggled against religious narrow mindedness and retrogressive thinking. This eventually gave birth to the concept of Wahdatul Wajud which became so popular that it came to stand at the root of the metaphysics found in classical Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi and Hindi poetry. This philosophy promoted universal love, equality, brotherhood and justice.

Kazy Javed was all praise for the sufis as they were responsible mainly for instilling liberal thinking in the minds of the Muslims of the sub-continent. Data Sahib, he said, was the first sufi scholar who had risen to defend poetry, music and the fine arts. That paved the way for the creation of a culture which respected human feelings and promoted liberalism.

The monthly meeting of Adab Serai was held last Monday at the residence of its chairperson, Shahnaz Muzzammil. A large number of poets were present on the occasion. In keeping with the month of Rabiul Awwal, most of them presented devotional poetry.

Two new books came up for comments. One was the poetic collection of Khalish Bijnauri, which happens to be his first. Titled, Azab heh yeh roshni, the collection is reflective of the poet's maturity. The second book was Karamat Bukhari's fifth collection of poetry, Dasht-i-Arzoo.