Purushottam Agrawal, former chairperson of the Centre of Indian Languages, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, is currently a member of the Union Public Service Commission of India. The above article is excerpted from his famous book, Akath Kahani Prem Ki: Kabir ki Kavita aur Unka Samay [The Untellable Tale of Love: Kabir’s Poetry and His Times], published by Rajkamal Prakashan, New Delhi, in 2009.
Akath Kahani Prem Ki: Kabir ki Kavita aur Un ka
Samay (An Untellable Tale of Love: Kabir’s Poetry and his Times) has created quite a stir in the
Hindi-speaking world. The book deserves to be translated in English, and soon,
for it’s sure to raise a similar global storm.
Agrawal has been engaged in a long-standing
love affair with the weaver from Kashi. This much is obvious every time he puts
pen to paper but there is more. Each time he does so, he shatters some
long-standing myths. The myth, for example, that Kabir was an ambassador of
inter-communal amity. Not so, argued Agrawal in an essay he wrote for
Communalism Combat (July 1999), marking the 600th anniversary of the sant-poet.
Contrary to the popular perception of his being an ‘apostle of Hindu–Muslim
unity’, Kabir’s notion of the individual challenges both the Varnashrama and
the Islamic belief system, Agrawal argued and convincingly so. "No one
knows Kabir except me," claims the Pakistani qawwal Farid Ayaz in Shabnam
Virmani’s outstanding documentary, Had-Anhad (Bounded-Boundless). There is none
like him, the iconoclast who demolished mandir and masjid with equal fervor, he
adds.
Ayaz speaks of ‘knowing’ Kabir with the
possessiveness of a jealous lover but clearly Agrawal too is intimate with the
one who continues to invite us – ‘jo bare ghar aapna, chale hamare saath (come
join me, if you are prepared to set your own home on fire) – to break all
barriers and reach for the boundless.
Now with Akath Kahani Agrawal shatters an
even more deeply held myth, the myth that men like Kabir, Tukaram, Namdeo, and
Ravidas were social freaks who lived outside their day and age. Akath Kahani is
not only a ‘tale’ of Kabir, other sant-poets and the India of their time. It is
also a tale about us. And what it says about us – the English-educated,
English-speaking, English-reading public – is deeply disturbing. Agrawal tells
us that English may well be our window to the world but because it came to us
as part of the colonial agenda it also colonised our minds. The colonial
masters have left long ago but our intellectual imprisonment continues, says
he. Akath Kahani simultaneously challenges both the Hindu-nationalist notion of
our ‘golden past’ and the modernist/Marxist notion that India was all darkness
where men like Kabir were freaks until the Angrez Sahebs brought us modernity
and enlightenment. English education such as it was taught us that the era of
book burning and inquisition marked the onset of modernity in Europe while
despite the huge social upheaval and churning in the then India articulated by
men like Kabir, we remained an "area of darkness". The colonial
masters used different intellectual frameworks to understand their own social
reality and ours and they taught us look at our own reality through their
lenses.
Akath Kahani is a compelling tale that can
help us reconnect with our own past and once we do that we can begin to
appreciate that there modernity arrived in India long before the British did,
that men like Kabir were not freaks but simultaneously its product and
promoters. Agrawal’s book needs to be translated in other languages because it
has relevance for all Indians. It is Communalism Combat’s privilege to have
taken the first step in translating excerpts from the book for its readers.
Teesta Setalvad, Javed Anand
(EDITORS -Communalism Combat)
Kashi ka Kabir
Reinterpreting a
poet’s life and his times
1. The memory, the search and the vernacular sources:
An anecdote from Raju Guide’s life Some people are quite convinced that India
was a veritable paradise on earth before the British arrived and that
foreigners are solely responsible for all our ills and problems. That is, of
course, another way of saying that we are not capable of solving these problems
any more than we are capable of creating a few of our own. Some others however
are equally convinced that the British, and the British alone, brought some
life and enlightenment to an otherwise doomed Indian society.
Both these
assessments spring from the same colonial episteme that prevents us from
looking at the dynamics and problems not just of India but of other colonised
societies as well.
One cannot ‘read’
Kabir without ‘reading’ the genius of the indigenous mind on the one hand and
the impact of colonial intervention on the other. This truth did not descend on
me from the heavens but came as a slow realisation during the long, painful and
adventurous journey in search of my own relation with Kabir.
In Kabir’s poetry,
biting social criticism and delicate personal emotion – love – coexist not as
drops of oil floating on water but as uniform and lustrous beads of water
itself. His compositions indicate a deep knowledge of the Puranic Hindu
tradition, Nath Panth and Islam. Born into a Muslim Julaha [weaver] family, he
joined the Vaishnav thinker, Ramanand, as a disciple. His constant irritation
with the Shaktas suggests a deep familiarity with the Shakta tradition as well.
In his Kabir Parchai (c. 1590), Anantdas categorically asserts that in the
beginning Kabir had been a Shakta himself: "Having wasted a lot of time
with Shaktas, he turned to Hari [god]."
Kabir was a
householder who expected his god to grant him sufficient resources to feed his
family and the occasional guest but he also spoke as a mendicant. He had some very
harsh things to say about women but adopts the persona of a woman in poetic
moments of deep love and devotion to his Ram. His anguish for the ‘outside’
world is matched by his agony in the inner universe.
Kabir’s search leads
him to the conclusion that in the human mind, the elements of kamabhavana
[sexual desire – the agitation of love], ramabhavana [spiritual restlessness]
and samajabhavana [outrage against injustice] exist not as conflicting forces
but as elements that reinforce one another. Any claim of reading Kabir without
reading this creative coexistence of the three elements is simply futile.
Kabir passed away by
1518 at the latest. In less than fifty years Hariram Vyas was singing the
praises of Kabir and his guru Ramanand. Within a hundred years Anantdas had
composed his Parchai. Here the word ‘parchai’ does not only denote ‘parichay’
[introduction per se] but also introduces the reader to a man-miracle. It is
interesting to note that within a hundred years of his demise Kabir was being
venerated as a miraculous personality and yet the ‘modern’ mind sees him as a
failure. According to one such contemporary assessment, "he was not
courageous enough to critique the Muslim atrocities" while according to
another, "he failed to establish a new religion".
The colonial
episteme has so circumscribed modern search and research of Kabir that
researchers and interpreters condescendingly treat him as a child who has lost
his way. We are told that though he did not know it himself, Kabir was a
forerunner of the Protestant missionaries, some kind of a Sufi, a Nath Panthi,
a Buddhist or even an Ajivaka. And not knowing who he really was, he continued
to see himself as immersed in "Naradi" (i.e. Vaishnav) Bhakti –
"Bhagati Naradi magan sharira, ihi widhi bhav tare Kabira [Immersed in
Naradi devotion, Kabir is confident of transcending the world]".
And it is not Kabir
alone. Modern episteme and knowledge treat the whole of Indian society and its
cultural experience as an interface between some wily conspirators on the one
hand and hopelessly naïve people on the other. Thus we are told that this
self-description as "immersed in Naradi Bhakti" (which, incidentally,
is found in the oldest manuscripts) has been inserted in Kabir’s poetry by such
conspirators.
Colonial modernity
and post-modernity have elevated the ideas of ‘conspiracy’ and ‘naïveté’ to the
status of key concepts for interpreting Indian history.
Throughout my book
you will see how the relation between ‘search’ and ‘memory’ impacts on the
understanding of Kabir. You will also see that Kabir scholars have either
totally ignored the vernacular sources or have used them as native informants
merely to authenticate an image of Indian society constructed by colonial
research and knowledge.
The native informant,
naturally, can do nothing more than provide the information. S/he is hardly
qualified to participate in the discourse, hardly expected to put the
information in perspective. The vernacular native informant is not allowed
anywhere near the high table of modern Kabir scholars: s/he should ‘inform’ and
promptly exit the scene.
Each modern scholar
may have a different reason for treating the vernacular sources so shabbily but
the end results are much the same. It is due to this shabby treatment of vernacular
sources that poets like Kabir from those ‘stagnant medieval times’ surprise the
modern scholars. Modern assessments bemoan the ‘failure’ of those who were so
instrumental in changing the everyday practices and attitudes of their society
to a great extent. Such estimations fail to recognise that poets like Kabir and
Tukaram were both products of their times as well as historical agents who
actively contributed to the transformation of their society and tradition. They
were not oddities, strange people far ahead of their time. If anything,
‘strange’ was that so-called medieval period which provided Kabir and Tukaram
with so many admirers and followers.
Kabir the weaver,
Tukaram the farmer, Namdev the tailor, Akha the goldsmith and Ravidas the
cobbler were never marginalised in the real life of vernacular communities but
only in the academic life of ‘English-speaking’ universities. In fact, these
people attracted the attention of British administrators and scholars precisely
because of the great veneration they enjoyed. Not only the literary historian
[George] Grierson but also William Crooke, who produced an insightful survey of
Hindi-speaking areas in the late 19th century, found Kabir being venerated and
worshipped as a god.
What were the
historical processes that made Kabir and others like him so revered in the
larger community? It is well known that most Nirgun Panthis, like Kabir, were
artisans and traders by vocation. So did trade and commerce play a role in
turning these sants into gods in the minds of the people? Can you have such a
large number of artisans and not have flourishing trade and commerce?
Throughout world
history the trading class has been in the forefront of the opposition to the
feudal idea of privileges and in support of the demand for ‘fair play’. This is
what led to the democratisation of social institutions and cultural common
sense. The spread of democratic ideas has invariably been connected with the
spread of trade and commerce. Was India an exception to this historical process?
The fact of the matter is that the central characteristic of the Nirgun Panthi
sensibility – the demand for fair play in matters spiritual and temporal – is
an offshoot of the social experiences and desires of traders and artisans. That
is why these communities worshipped poets like Kabir as gods.
The relation that
modern scholarship has established with vernacular sources, not only in the
context of Kabir but in general, brings to mind a scene from the film, Guide.
As villagers reveal an increasing respect for Raju, the guide, the village
priests become increasingly upset. In order to knock Raju off his pedestal,
they confront him with a poser in Sanskrit. Raju obviously cannot meet the
challenge, for he knows no Sanskrit. The priests are now quite excited:
"What can he say, has no Sanskrit." Raju’s reputation is at stake. He
gets going in English. Now the priests are at a loss: "What can they say,
have no English."
Modern scholarship
must realise that those "not having" Sanskrit/Persian or English also
have something to say. When we listen to these voices carefully, we can easily
see that Kabir was never treated either as a failure or a marginal voice in his
own society and tradition. We can also see that Kabir was not speaking to a
decadent and stagnant community that was waiting on colonial modernity for its
deliverance. It was a society heading towards its own modernity by transforming
its tradition. Kabir and Tukaram seem ‘like moderns’ not because they were far
ahead of their time but because their times were witnessing the emergence of
modernity in Indian history.
You will notice in
this book that my ideas of Kabir’s times and of the Indian cultural experience
as a whole are rather different. The reason is simple. For years now I have
been trying to listen as well to those who speak neither Sanskrit nor Persian
nor English.
2. ‘Behold this
wonder’: modern poet in medieval times
Once upon a time,
there was a great thinker and reformer. He was convinced of the congenitally
evil and deceitful nature of the Jews. He actually authored a treatise, On the
Jews and Their Lies, wherein he castigates ‘his’ people: "Shame on you,
these vile Jews are still alive and kicking… Burn the scriptures and synagogues
of these vermin, drive them away from our beautiful land or force them into
slavery."
One is talking here
not of Hitler but of Martin Luther (1483-1546), the father of Protestant
Reformation and a junior contemporary of Kabir. British scholars were very fond
of comparing him with Kabir; some even described Kabir as an "Indian
Luther". On the Jews and Their Lies is not an outburst of an immature
young man. It was written by Luther in 1543, in his advanced years, when he was
already venerated as the originator of the Protestant Reformation and the
spiritual and temporal guide of the German lords. His anti-Semitism inspired
Hitler greatly. In Luther’s time the cultural spectacle of book-burning was
also quite popular in Europe. The Basel city council had decided to burn the
Latin translation of the Koran but rescinded its order after Luther intervened,
arguing that knowledge of the Koran would highlight the "glory of Christ,
the good of Christendom, the disadvantage of Muslims and the vexation of the
devil."1
The practice of
book-burning carried on for several centuries and was exported to other parts
of the world as Catholic and Protestant missionaries vied with one another in
saving heathen souls as well as burning books. Not even the word of god was
spared in this competition. Lutheran Protestants working in South India charged
the Jesuit Catholics with hunting down and burning copies of a Tamil version of
the Bible that they had published.2 This competition amongst the pious led to
Michael Servetus (burnt at the stake in 1553) being bestowed with the "dubious
honour that Protestants in Geneva burned him and his books in reality, and
Catholics in France in effigy."3
Early modern Europe
burnt alive around one hundred thousand women between 1480 and 1700. The
horrors of the ‘holy’ Inquisition are only too well known. Its ‘golden age’
coincided with the early modern period of European history. The same period saw
the notoriously intolerant Feroz Tughlaq and Aurangzeb ruling in India. But
neither of them could even conceive of establishing an institution devoted
solely to the persecution and killing of heretics.
A distinction is
generally made between modernity and enlightenment. The latter, it is said,
follows the former. Before modernity, some individuals may achieve a level of
enlightenment in spite of general backwardness and ignorance but they are
considered to be ahead of their time. The general dissemination of enlightened
values is possible only after a society starts modernising itself. Early
modernity started in Europe during the 15th century and the Enlightenment began
in the 17th. It is in this sense that people like Kabir, Tukaram and Akbar are
described as "ahead of their time and closer to the modern i.e.
enlightened mind". We, the ‘moderns’, read Kabir and Tukaram with some
surprise, as they seem to provide a foretaste of typically modern existential
anxieties and concerns.
The question however
is whether or not such concerns and anxieties relate to the times of Kabir and
Tukaram. Do they or do they not reflect the ‘mood’ of their own times? Were
they simply ahead of their time or did they not only reflect but also
participate in the contemporary churning of ideas? How is it that their poetry
was not only widely appreciated but also, in the case of Kabir at least,
inspired many others to compose similar poems in his name? Historically
speaking, the most important question would be: what was the role of trade and
commerce in this churning?
During the period
under consideration vernacular thinkers like Sarhapa and Kabir were making a
blistering critique of Brahmin hegemony or ‘Manuwad’. More importantly, even
the Dharmashastra scholars in Sanskrit, responding to the changed social
configurations brought about by the spread of commerce, were reinterpreting the
Dharmashastra. Deval was categorical in his opinion: "So far as commerce
is concerned, the real practices and conventions of trade are to be given
precedence over the hundreds of scriptural instructions, even if the
instructions are from Manu himself."4
Manu prescribed very
light penalties for Brahmin offenders. According to him, under no circumstances
was a Brahmin culprit to be awarded capital punishment. In our own period,
Hardutt, commenting on Gautama’s Dharmasutra, opines that not all those who
were born Brahmin but only a Brahmin who scrupulously observed all the rules
and rituals may be granted some concessions. Chandeswar, the author of Vivada
Ratnakara, introduces such stringent conditions for clemency towards Brahmins
as to make any special treatment virtually impossible. According to him, the
exemption from capital punishment can be made available only to a Brahmin who
is well versed in the Vedas, Vedangas, logic and history and who diligently
performs the six daily rituals. Moreover, even such a Brahmin is to be spared
capital punishment only if the offence was unintentional. A deliberate offender
must be treated harshly even if he is a model Brahmin. In contrast, the
harshest punishment that Manu prescribed for even an illiterate Brahmin was
banishment and this did not even entail the confiscation of his property.5
Interestingly, both
the votaries of bhartiyata [Indianness] and the revolutionaries choose to skip
over this historical evolution. Both share the myth of an ‘eternal’ or frozen
India. Both the admirers of Manu and his sworn enemies ignore the fact that
Indian society had at that time a political economy of its own which continued
to evolve in history. India was ‘within’ history even before the British
arrived. Manu, the mythological harbinger of Brahmin supremacy, had been so
marginalised by Kabir’s time that Kabir did not even bother to attack him by
name.
The glory of Manu
was reincarnated in the 18th century, courtesy of [Governor General] Warren
Hastings, when a committee of 11 Brahmins ‘codified’ Hindu law under the
chairmanship of the orientalist, Nathaniel Halhed. Halhed Sahib knew Persian
but not Sanskrit. So the codified Hindu law in Sanskrit was first rendered into
spoken Bengali, then into Persian for the sahib to read, who then rendered it
into English for the convenience of his fellow administrators. And undergoing
so many translations, the text of Hindu law had naturally been somewhat
corrupted.
William Jones [the
English philologist] was very unhappy with the corrupted text. But, according
to him, the corruption sprang not from the strange method of codification but
from the morally corrupt nature of the 11 pandits. [Historical anthropologist]
Nicholas Dirks points out that both in this context as well as others, the
colonial knowledge system used to ‘translate’ the problems arising out of
linguistic and cultural ignorance into the ‘infirmities and corruption’ of the
colonised.6
Anyway, Jones Sahib
chose his own, better pandits and prepared an ‘authentic’ text of Hindu law.
This text of the Manu Smriti was published in 1794 under the title Institutes
of Hindu Law: Or, The Ordinances of Manu. Now, [Governor General] Lord
Cornwallis was confident that this text prepared with the help of Pandit
Jagannath Tarkapanchanan would be easily accepted by the Hindus. Sir John Shore
[Cornwallis’s successor] was thrilled that Brahmin pandits had ‘created’ the
Hindu law under the guidance of the British.7
This was a rather
novel ‘experiment’ in governing the natives in accordance with their own laws,
where the natives’ ‘own laws’ were ‘given’ by the colonial power itself. The
natives could hardly be expected to play a role other than that of the ‘native
informant’. A couplet from Akbar Allahabadi’s poem ‘in praise of’ the ‘New’
Delhi built by the British comes to mind:
"Auz-e-waqt
mulaki unka, Charkh-e-haft tabaki unka
Mehfil unki saki
unka, aankhen meri baki unka
[Time is on their
side, the heavens dote on them/ The tavern is theirs and so is the taverner, I
only have eyes to behold the spectacle]."
The year 1794 can be
described as the year of the rebirth of Manuwad. The codification of Hindu law
undertaken by the colonial power gave Manu Smriti its unprecedented centrality
and importance. Until then – before and after the Kabir era – it was just one
of the many Smritis, a bit more respected, of course, but was never treated as
the Smriti. Its injunctions were never read as binding in all circumstances, in
all parts of the country. The colonial power and its "official
Brahmins" (to use Nicholas Dirks’s phrase) chose to read this normative
text as if it were describing actual practices. In the colonial and
post-colonial knowledge systems, fantasies in the name of Manu were taken as
hard facts of Indian history. Some saw Manu as the ‘ideal’ of the Hindu social
system while others theorised on the basis of the Manu Smriti that before the
arrival of the British, India was run solely on the basis of fear and
persecution.
If this were the way
to read a normative text, we must necessarily assume that with the American
Declaration of Independence in 1776, all men "created equal by god"
began to enjoy equality in actual practice. As we all know, the US was an apartheid-practising
society until the mid-20th century. Be it the Manu Smriti or the declaration or
Constitution of any country, such normative texts must not be read as some kind
of narrative of real-life everyday practices. Such texts can only be read along
with accounts of lived experience and it is only such a reading that can give
us an idea of the actual role and importance of the Manu Smriti or any other
text before, during and after Kabir’s time. That is in fact how the history of
Europe is written and read but in the case of the non-western world, it is a
different matter altogether.
While writing the
history of Europe, the modern is distinguished from the medieval on the basis
of a new understanding of the changed relation between individual, society and
cosmos, of birth-related parameters of social hierarchy being replaced by
role-related ones. As the spread of commerce leads to the emergence of new
social groups and new intellectuals, the authority of religion is challenged.
The rising number and increasing influence of traders provides a wider and
sustainable social basis for the popular discontent against feudal privileges.
The demand to replace these with the practice of fair play becomes increasingly
vocal. It is then that traders and artisans can hear echoes of their own
temporal demands in the spiritual yearnings of the sadhaks [seekers] of
mystical, transcendental liberation and equality. The voices of social dissent
and protest evolve into social movements and as a result of this dynamics, a
public sphere, distinct from the private and official spheres, is created.
Were all these
events confined to Europe during the ‘vernacular millennium’ or did the rest of
the globe also experience something similar around the same time? In Indian
history the vernacularisation of intellectual life, the secularisation of the
Dharmashastra and the evolution of the public sphere of Bhakti are closely
interrelated. This interrelation leads to the elevation of Kabir the weaver to
the status of a guru. In this changed social reality, Sarvajit, the arrogant
Brahmin scholar from South India, Virsingh Baghel and Bijli Khan, influential
lords from Central India, and Pipa, a raja from the western parts, become
humble disciples of the ‘illiterate’, ‘low-born’ Julaha – Kabir.
Surprisingly, little
notice is taken of the profound historical and social implications of such
telling instances whereby the feudal parameters of social hierarchy and
respectability were replaced by new ones. Instead of being recognised as
indicators of historical evolution with far-reaching implications, these are
read merely as minor details in the narrative of Kabir being ‘ahead of his
time’. The question is, was Kabir alone ahead of his time? Were the Brahmins
and rajas who chose Kabir the weaver as guru even further ahead of their time?
Of course, there
were crucial differences between early modern Europe and India. Whereas in
Europe you had to seek permission from the church to do so much as breathe,
India had no comparable institution. Hence, unlike Europe, India did not
witness a sharp division between the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’. Even in the
Muslim world, the caliphate did not enjoy churchlike powers. While the kings in
Europe could not even marry without clearance from Rome, the Mughal emperors of
India didn’t give a hoot about the khalifa.
Sir Jack Goody, a
scholar of comparative history, reminds his European readers: "We would
never have reached a situation where an Enlightenment in this sense had to take
place, had we not been converted to a single, dominant, monotheistic religion.
In Europe, that religion tried to regulate the people’s way of life in a very
radical manner. In every village, a costly church was erected, a custodian
appointed… There was little enough space for the secular."8
The centrality of
religion continues to dictate European mores in many ways even today. The king
of England is the ‘protector’ of the Anglican church, the US president takes
the oath of office on the Bible, US bills carry the legend, "In God We
Trust", divinity schools coexist alongside radical schools of social and
natural sciences on the most progressive university campuses. And yet,
ironically enough, sometimes with derision and sometimes condescendingly,
scholars from the western world find their societies very secular and the rest
of the world too religious. Even more interesting is the non-western propensity
to internalise such western descriptions of their own societies. To put it
simply, "They define us and we succumb to the definitions."
The indigenous modernity
of any society indicates a rupture in the continuity of tradition while
colonial modernity leads to a fundamental dissociation of social sensibility.
The intelligentsia born of this dissociation first locates itself in the
tradition of Europe – from ‘ancient’ to ‘modern’ – and only then attempts to
‘search’ or invent the ‘tradition’ of its own society. The history of political
thought invariably begins with Plato. It is simply forgotten that other
societies must have also given some thought to the origin and dynamics of
state. The ideas of the western, Protestant thinker, Max Weber, on bureaucracy
are studied and taught but no one bothers to study the ideas of the ancient
Chinese who invented this institution.
This dissociation or
dislocation of sensibility leads to a very insubstantial and arbitrary sense of
tradition in the modern mind. Ignoring the totality of the dynamics of the
tradition, all the ‘desired’ elements are attributed to it while anything
‘embarrassing’ is dismissed as a pernicious foreign influence. Some people can
only see the Kama Sutra and Khajuraho in Hindu tradition while to some others
the same tradition resembles a monastery of celibates. The simple fact that the
ideas of erotica, renunciation and the concerns of everyday life were integral
parts of the same whole is simply overlooked by the modern beholder or inventor
of the Hindu tradition.
It is exactly a
hundred years now since Tagore in his Gora and Gandhi in his Hind Swaraj sought
to free the colonised mind from such diffidence.
This diffidence is a
mirror image of the arrogance and condescension that the typical European mind
nurtures with reference to non-western traditions and peoples. The African
political scientist Achille Mbembe puts the issue succinctly:
"On key
matters, the Hegelian, post-Hegelian and Weberian traditions, philosophies of
action and philosophies of deconstruction derived from Nietzsche and Heidegger
share the representation of distinction between the West and other historical
human forms as largely the way the individual in the West has gradually freed
him/herself from the sway of traditions and attained an autonomous capacity to
conceive, in here and now, the definitions of norms and their free formulation
by individual, rational wills. These traditions also share, to varying degrees,
the assumption that compared to the West, other societies are primitive, simple
or traditional in that, in them the weight of the past determines the
individual behaviour and limits the area of choice – as it were, a priori. The
formulation of norms in these later societies has nothing to do with reasoned
public deliberation, since the setting of norms by a process of argument is a
specific invention of modern Europe."9
The issue of
indigenous modernity in India has become entangled with the question of
‘potentialities of capitalism’ in pre-colonial India. The argument is that the
idea of indigenous modernity makes sense only if you can prove the potential of
capitalism before the British Raj. This is indeed quite interesting. Nobody
finds anything incongruous in the sequence of modern ideas, commerce,
capitalism and industrialisation in European history but India is expected to
go the other way round. It must first prove the potential of capitalism before
the idea of modernity is even discussed. In the case of Europe, modernity is
spotted in challenges to the church and in the spread of commerce but in the
case of non-European societies, these parameters are discarded.
The Roman Catholic
church used to issue ‘indulgences’ (assurances on behalf of god that you will
not suffer in hell or in limbo) on payment of a suitable fee. Luther wrote to
Rome requesting the discontinuation of this practice but the church simply
ignored the request. This prompted Luther to ‘publish’ his ‘95 Theses’ by
pasting these on the door of the church in his native Wittenberg. It is thus
that he came to be known as the pioneer of ‘early modernity’.
His contemporary,
Kabir, was not so fortunate even though, unlike Luther, Kabir did not view any
community as vermin and who, rather than limiting himself to the criticism of a
few religious practices and institutions, attempted to envision a spirituality
outside the realm of organised religion.
It is also
interesting to note that the prevalence of widespread commerce in pre-British
India is ‘seen’ by every historian. The historians know that this commerce was
conducted through promissory notes, commission agents, putting-out systems,
‘rationally’ written agreements and account books and with mechanisms in place
to ensure compliance with the agreements and promises. They also see the
existence of long-term investments and ‘businessman’s ethics’ which, unlike the
feudal idea of ‘honour’, gave precedence to prudence over ostentatious living.
So, contrary to what Weber believed, merchant’s ethics could also have stemmed
from sources other than Protestant dogma.
And this merchant’s
ethics brought far-reaching changes in social attitudes and practices. Kabir’s
was not a society based on the jajmani [patronage] system, dominated solely by
Brahmins. Traders and artisans were quite powerful and influential and there
was an ongoing tussle between the parasitic priests and the traders. Kabir’s
sharp attack on the priests of all religions and his popularity amongst the
traders and artisans was a natural offshoot of this tussle. Jack Goody rightly
notes in his study, The East in the West: "Of their [Banias and traders]
importance there can be no doubt, whatever the Brahmin ideology had to say"10
(emphasis added).
Although of Hindu
provenance, the ideology of Varnashrama was used by Muslim and Christian
(British) rulers to their advantage. As a matter of fact, the British
deliberately destroyed India’s commerce and thus weakened the social base for the
rejection of Varnashrama ideology. It is important to note that not only Kabir
but most of those who rejected this casteist ideology had some connection with
trade and commerce. The author of the famed autobiography, Ardhakathanak [A
Half Story], the jewel merchant, Banarasidas, was also the founder of the
anti-Varnashrama sect, Adhyatma Panth. In fact, Kabir himself referred to his
god as a Bania: "Sai mera Bania sahaj kare vyapar [My Lord is a Bania who
deals in the innate]."
The supposed Hindu
taboo on sea voyage is often cited as incontrovertible proof of the stagnant,
insular ‘social attitudes’ in pre-colonised India. It is also used to argue
that in spite of commerce, there was hardly any change in the social and
cultural practices of Indians. It is suggested that only foreigners, or Indian
Muslims at best, were engaged in overseas trade while Hindu traders remained
‘genetically’ backward and ‘insular’.
The Marwari Banias
are considered to be one of the most conservative and insular communities even
today. In the century of Kabir however, Marwaris had a thriving business as far
away as Russia. By the 17th century they had a colony of their own in the city
of Astrakhan on the banks of the Volga. They had their own temples, employed
Brahmin priests and occasionally also invited sadhus, Jain munis and Sikh
granthis from India. They dealt in jewels, textiles, spices and moneylending
and were so influential in the corridors of power that the tsar had instructed
the local governor to ensure a smooth religious and cultural life for these
‘cow-worshippers’ who were sometimes seen as ‘offending’ the sensibility of
‘true’ Christians by acts such as burning their dead. In order to fulfil their
ritual and cultural needs, these Marwari Banias even consecrated the Volga,
indeed turned it into their local Ganga, by pouring some gangajal into it.11
The fact of the
matter is that the taboo on sea voyage was confined to some communities and
regions. However, colonial knowledge ‘convinced’ the Indians that this had been
an ‘integral’ part of their pan-Indian tradition.
The historian Carlo
Ginzburg quotes [French historian] Lucien Febvre: "To describe what one
sees is one thing but to see what must be described, that is the hard
part."12
Sadly, so far as the
historiography of India is concerned, even that which can be clearly seen is
not described, to say nothing of seeing "what must be described".
Kabir was ‘worshipped’ as a god, his followers including the rich and famous of
the time. The tribal Gonds ruled for centuries in the Central Indian state of
Mandla while Brahmins sang their praises. These are ‘known facts’. How then can
it also be ‘true’ that in so-called medieval India, none but the Brahmins were
venerated and respected? How can it be true that in pre-colonised India, there
was only jajmani and no political economy?
The fact is that the
British Raj marked not the beginning of modernity in Indian society but the end
of its indigenous, vernacular modernity. This led to the dissociation of
sensibility and the resultant diffidence in the Indian mind. Which civilised
and modern society could even imagine the existence of schools where children
are fined for speaking their mother tongue? We all know that "it happens
only in India".
The British
certainly did not invent caste but the credit for inventing the myths of caste
hierarchy and the contention that considerations of ‘racial purity’ made India
immune to political economy and the spread of commerce certainly goes to them.
The invention of these myths was necessary to sustain the fiction of the
‘progressive’ role being played by the Raj in bringing a frozen society into
contact with the warm ‘mainstream’ of historical progress.
Indian society was
never an ‘otherworldly’ society, limited to contemplating great abstractions,
nor was it always immersed in ahimsa and compassion. The warmongering,
battle-ready and ‘politicised’ sadhus are not a phenomenon confined to the 20th
and 21st centuries. In Kabir’s period too there were frequent and bloody
battles between the Shaiva sanyasis and the Vaishnavs. These battles were
rooted in the conflict over economic and symbolic resources. Apart from their
stake in the income from places of pilgrimage and from patrons, both the
sanyasis and the Vaishnavs were also engaged in the moneylending business. In
addition to these temporal arenas of conflict, ‘symbolic’ conflict was centred
on the ‘right to renunciation’. The Shaiva sanyasis granted this right only to
the Brahmins while according to the Vaishnavs, anyone could opt for renunciation,
irrespective of caste, and they were willing to take up arms to defend this
right.
Kabir’s India was
negotiating its way towards its own modernity, a negotiation that involved
painful conflicts as well as the evolution of ‘reasoned’ norms through a
process of argument. This process led to the creation of the public sphere of
Bhakti.
3. The public
sphere of Bhakti
Caste was by no
means a democratic system. If it had been, Kabir would not have found its
criticism necessary. But it was not a racist system either. No doubt there was
stagnation in Varnashrama-oriented thinking but not in the thought patterns of
the whole of Indian society. The dynamics informing caste mobility flew in the
face of the Varnashrama fantasies of perpetual domination. Poets like Kabir,
Pipa, Meera and Ravidas were in fact one step ahead, as they were already
insisting on the idea of individual dignity and equality in all matters and
practices. All this took place in the public sphere of Bhakti.
According to [German
sociologist and philosopher] Jürgen Habermas, secularity is an inevitable
ingredient of the idea of the public sphere. From this viewpoint, the idea of
Bhakti as a public sphere might sound a bit odd. But, firstly, the ‘totally’
secular picture, even of European modernity, is nothing but a myth. Secondly,
India could not have had a Europe-like rupture between the religious and the
secular, since religion was not as widespread. Pre-colonial India, unlike
Europe, was not really a religious (should we say dharmapran?!) society. India
had to have a Europe-like church in order to have a Europe-like ‘secularity’.
Instead of looking for an Indian version of the European public sphere and
secularity, one should take note of the fact that Kabir, Pipa and Meera were
not translating the ‘word of god’ into the vernacular. Rather, they were busy
elevating the vernacular to the status of the language of god.
There are only two
universal prerequisites for the public sphere. One, it must have an existence
autonomous from the private and official spheres. Two, it must be based on
everyone’s access to information and knowledge. These two essentials define the
poetic sensibilities of the various sants in any case. More importantly, they
define the organisational structures and interface between the various Bhakti
sects. The late 19th century administrator, William Crooke, recognised the
cultural role of the Vaishnav sects of the ‘lower castes’ quite correctly: "to
establish the more intellectual and more sacred forms of public worship and to
actively oppose the ideas and practices of the Brahmin hegemony."13
This tradition was
passed down from the time of Kabir, whose contemporary admirer, Pipa, paying
back the upholders of Brahmin hegemony in their own coin, bracketed the idea of
Kaliyug with this hegemony itself. "Had Kabir not been there, the Kaliyug
in collusion with dominant ideas would have taken the world to hell," said
Pipa.
And Tulsidas,
outraged by such talk, did not mince his words while condemning the opponents
of brahmanical ideology: "These days nobody talks of anything but
knowledge of the Brahma (i.e. the godhead) and Brahmins even murder the guru
for a pittance. The Sudras dare the Brahmins and scold them, saying we are your
equals, as the Brahmin is the one who knows the Brahma. Such people talk in
sakhis, dohas and anecdotes. In this Kaliyug the so-called bhagats go on
denouncing the Vedas and the Puranas" (dohavali 552-554).
Note the radically
opposite senses in which Tulsidas and Pipa use the same term – Kaliyug. This
opposition was part of the larger debates and arguments taking place in the
public sphere of Bhakti through institutions like panths, temples, maths, and
the satsangs [sacred gatherings]. Tulsidas was naturally upset with those who
were rejecting the ‘age-old’ ideas of the Varnashrama but could do little about
it, as the rising class of traders and artisans identified more with people
like Kabir who imagined their god and themselves through terms, metaphors and
idioms drawn from the daily life of trade and commerce.
4. The weaver from
Kashi
Indian society did,
of course, have its problems and unresolved issues but as a result of the
dissociation of sensibility induced by colonial modernity, modern studies of
Kabir have scarcely bothered to explore these and place Kabir in their context.
The scholars have instead been asking questions such as whether Kabir actually
represented the ‘natural’ evolution of the Indian tradition of Bhakti or
whether his bhakti was an offshoot of ‘foreign’ (read Islamic) influences.
Assertions have been made that "Islam left hardly any impact on the Bhakti
sensibility." Kabir’s Muslim parentage has been doubted because of his
knowledge of Hindu traditions. And due to a similar knowledge of the Nath
Panthi traditions, his family is supposed to have followed in some way the
practices of the Nath Panth.
All these assertions
and queries appropriate for 19th-20th century India are being projected
backwards into 15th-16th century India. It is conveniently forgotten that as
late as the 18th century, Dariya Sahib (of Bihar), who was a Muslim tailor,
chose to pen his own version of the Nirgun Ramayana under the title Gyan Ratan,
following exactly the forms and style of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas. Around the
same time Marco della Tomba, an Italian missionary settled in North Bihar, was
translating parts of the Ramcharitmanas, describing it as the
"Kabiristi" Ramayana simply because he was introduced to this text by
the Kabir Panthis. And in the 20th century the French scholar of Kabir,
Charlotte Vaudeville, was quite confidently telling her readers that this
"Kabiristi" Ramayana translated by Tomba was actually a Buddhist
version of the Ram story in which Ram appears not as a warrior but as a
mendicant.14 Ironically enough, Tomba had chosen to translate the ‘Lanka Kanda’
of Tulsidas’s text and ordinary readers know how Ram appears there. Obviously,
one cannot be too sure of the great scholars and experts on Indian history and
culture!
Anantdas says in the
very first stanza of his Kabir Parchai: "There was a Julaha living in
Kashi who followed the customs of the devotees of Hari. Earlier, he spent many
days among the worshippers of the goddess; afterwards he spent time praising
the virtues of Hari."
The third stanza
tells us: "Kabir said: ‘I belong to a Muslim caste. How can I obtain these
prayer beads?’ The inner voice said to him: ‘Take an initiation from
Ramanand’."
And then the seventh
stanza informs us of the lamentations of his family and community: "His
own family members came together and lamented: ‘He has gotten confused. Why has
he abandoned the customs of his own home where Mecca and Medina, the Muslim
creed, fasting during Ramadan and prayers to Allah are our way of
worship?’"15
Anantdas composed
similar parchais of Ravidas, Pipa, Angad and Trilochan. Although he wrote in
the idiom of miracles, he wrote about the lives of ‘ordinary’ humans, not
divine figures. This was quite congruent with the emerging early modern
sensibility. Similarly, he credited Namdev (only two centuries before him) with
being the ‘first’ bhakta in this Kaliyug.
It has been argued
in modern Kabir scholarship that Kabir’s family were only recent converts to
Islam. Well, Kabir was not born into a family of Chughtai Mughals or Seljuk
Turks at any rate. People from his social strata were ‘recent converts’ in any
case and we have no clue to the measure of this recentness. It may have been
just one generation earlier or maybe five. Who knows? All we know from the
evidence of both Ravidas and Pipa is that in Kabir’s family "Id and Bakri
Id were observed and the cow was slaughtered."16
The Kabir Panth was
a community of traders and artisans. The founder of the panth – Dharmdas –
belonged to the ‘lower rung’ of the Vaishya jati. Today his descendants and the
bulk of his followers would be known as OBCs. Their economic condition had
improved but they still lacked symbolic capital. The attempts to create such
capital resulted in the creation of the Bhakti public sphere.
In the 19th century
this public sphere had an interface with the emerging, sharply defined and
mutually exclusive identities of Hindu and Muslim. At the same time, the ‘print
culture’ had arrived in a big way. Many Kabir Panthi texts started appearing in
print. Swami Parmanand’s Kabir Manshur (first published in Urdu in 1887) was
one such text. This was published in Ferozepur, Punjab, where the air was
particularly thick with sharp exchanges between the Arya Samajis and the
Tablighis. Everyone was asked, as it were, to clearly identify him/herself as
Hindu or Muslim. This choice was projected back on Kabir as well and Kabir
Manshur ‘proved’ that he was not a Muslim in a rather forceful way:
"After some
time, all the Julahas gathered and asked Niru [Kabir’s father] to get his son
circumcised in accordance with the commands and traditions of the prophet of
Islam. A barber was duly summoned and he along with his knife reached the
child, Kabir. Lo and behold, the child showed five penises to the barber and
said, ‘Cut whichever you like.’ On seeing this arrangement, the terrified
barber took flight and Kabir was spared the circumcision."17
Some scholars
indulge in all manner of intellectual jugglery to prove that Kabir was not a
Muslim. They should ‘see’ and ‘show’ the ‘arrangement’ depicted by Swami
Parmanand. It would ‘prove’ their point without expending too much energy and
effort. Others take pains to prove that Kabir was in fact a Nath Panthi or a
Sufi. One wonders how Kabir, who constantly describes himself as a ‘Julaha’
and, alluding with irony to the then prevalent prejudices, sometimes even as
‘vile’ [kamina], simply forgot to mention the ‘fact’ of his being a Nath or a
Sufi.
Similarly, some are
very fond of projecting Kabir as an ‘apostle’ of Hindu-Muslim unity. Kabir in
his poetry and in legends shows no inclination towards the kind of Hindu-Muslim
unity that is spoken of today. Anantdas reports in detail how ‘representatives’
of Hindus and Muslims from Kashi forged unity not because of Kabir’s poetry but
against it and approached the court of Sikandar Lodi, who was visiting Kashi.
Their complaint was fundamental: Kabir has "corrupted everyone. He has
separated himself from both the Hindus and the Muslims." To put it in the
idiom of our times, Kabir was ‘guilty’ of ‘hurting religious sentiments’. The
crucial concern of these representatives was that "no one respects us as
long as this Julaha remains in Kashi."18
The emperor
interrogated and tortured Kabir but was ultimately convinced by the miraculous
purity of Kabir’s heart and purpose: "Kabir, your Ram is the true god.
Just this once, please save my life! The kazis and mullahs do not understand
the inner truth. The creator has accepted your word."19
Sikandar offered him
several gifts which, naturally, Kabir politely declined and then walked back to
his abode, followed by his Ram!
As the end drew
near, Kabir decided to move to Maghar in order to debunk the belief that dying
in Kashi guaranteed entry into heaven. But once in Maghar, he missed his Kashi,
as it was not just a ‘holy’ city to him but his own city, the city of his
childhood pranks and youthful adventures, the city of his friends and family,
the city of his dreams, which now haunted him. Kabir describes his feelings
towards his city in a poignant poem (collected in Adi Granth, 1604 CE) that is
generally ignored by his progressive and radical admirers, for it is likely to
‘deconstruct’ the unidimensional, ‘progressive’ image of Kabir that they have
so diligently constructed.
Kabir’s final
departure was as dramatic as the rest of his life. He talked of the futility of
the religious divide all his life but his ‘admirers’ fought over his body to
settle the question: cremation or burial? Kabir had probably foreseen this
drama, as one of his poems suggests:
"Hindu kahen
hum hi le jaaron, Turk kahen mor pir
Dou aaye dinan main
main jhagdein, dekhein hans Kabir
[The Hindu wants to
burn my body but the Muslim resists: ‘How can you do this to my pir?’/ The
followers of both religions quarrel as Kabir the swan looks on]" (Bijak,
pada 90).
Since Kabir had
foreseen his followers’ enthusiasm regarding the ‘treatment’ his dead body
should receive, he took care to make ‘suitable arrangements’. How did he feel
as he made these arrangements? Much like Gandhi perhaps, who along with a few
friends and comrades was ‘fast asleep’ at Haidari Mansion in Kolkata on the
night of the 14th and 15th of August 1947 when India was "awakening to the
dawn of freedom".
Kabir himself called
for some flowers, spread them over the sheet, wrapped himself up, asked his
followers to sing bhajans and quietly ‘left’. It is unclear whether he left the
world itself at that very moment or whether he left the world of his followers
who were now free to divide, cremate and bury the flowers. Kabir had nothing to
do with all this; he was on his way, alone. Or, more correctly, with his
sadhana [spiritual endeavour], his poetry and his loneliness.
Kabir says: "I
cry for this world, I am not sure if somebody will cry for me, maybe he who
knows the Sabad [Word] will cry for me."
Without a doubt. As
long as there are words, he who knows the Word will certainly cry for Kabir –
the Sabad sadhak. n
(Translated
by Javed Anand.)
Notes
1 Hans J.
Hillerbrand, ‘On Book Burnings and Book Burners: Reflections on the Power (and
Powerlessness) of Ideas’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion (Vol. 74,
No. 3, September 2006), Atlanta, ed. Charles Matthews, p. 598.
2 Kate Teltscher,
India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India 1600-1800, Oxford
University Press, New Delhi, 1997, p. 101.
3 Hans J.
Hillerbrand, op. cit., p. 600.
4 Ashutosh Dayal
Mathur, Medieval Hindu Law: Historical Evolution and Enlightened Rebellion,
Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2007, p. 14.
5 Ibid, p. 188.
6 Nicholas B. Dirks,
The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain, Permanent
Black, New Delhi, 2006, p. 229.
7 Kate Teltscher,
op. cit., pp.199-200.
8 Jack Goody, The
Theft of History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006, p. 242.
9 Achille Mbembe, On
the Postcolony, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2001, pp. 10-11.
10 Jack Goody, The
East in the West, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, p. 94.
11 The Encyclopedia
of the Indian Diaspora, ed. Brij V. Lal, Oxford University Press, New Delhi,
2006, pp. 364-365.
12 Carlo Ginzburg,
The Judge and the Historian: Marginal Notes on a Late-Twentieth-Century
Miscarriage of Justice, tr. Antony Shugaar, Verso, London, 1999, p. 36.
13 William Crooke,
The Tribes and castes of the North western India, first published, 1896,
reprint, Cosmo Publications, Delhi, 1975, Vol. I, Preface, p. CLXIX.
14 Charlotte
Vaudeville, A Weaver Named Kabir: Selected Verses with a Detailed Biographical
and Historical Introduction, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1993, p. 15.
15 David N.
Lorenzen, Kabir Legends and Ananta-Das’s Kabir Parachai, Sri Satguru
Publications, Delhi, 1992, pp. 93-94.
16 Shahabuddin
Iraqi, The Sarbangi of Rajjabdas, Granthayan, Aligarh, 1985, p. 173; and
Shukdev Singh, Raidas Bani, Radhakrishna Prakashan, New Delhi, p. 229.
17 Kabir Manshur,
reprint, Venkateshwar Press, Mumbai, 2001, pp. 268-269.
18 David N.
Lorenzen, op. cit., pp. 107-108.
19 Ibid, p. 113.
