The dargah of Rehman Baba
The Taliban strikes again
BY GP DESHPANDE
In the name of God shall I sing
The One whose name higher than any other
He is the master of all masters
He is the king of all kings...
These lines belong to Rehman Baba. Annemarie Schimmel was a German scholar of
South Asian Islam and its literatures who published (in 1996) a wonderful book,
Glorious Poems from India and Pakistan: Islamic Lyrics of a Thousand Years
(as translated from the original German text). The very last lyric there is
a rather long poem translated by her from Pashto. What I have cited above are
the opening lines of the lyric. They could well belong to Namdev or Meera but
let that be. What you see above is a working translation by me just to give you
a feel of Rehman Baba’s attitude. I hope some of Rehman Baba’s confidence comes
across in spite of my admittedly inadequate rendering of the late Schimmel’s
German rendering of the Pashto text. "If I sing in the lord’s name, my master,
in fact the only master in the world, nobody can stop me for I do His wish" is
what he is saying.
Rehman Baba’s full name was Abdurrahman Mohmand (sic). He was born in 1653,
south of Peshawar, and died not far from his birthplace in 1711. His kabr
became a pilgrimage centre in a manner of speaking. It is visited by thousands
even now. Or was, shall we say? The Taliban has now destroyed the dargah on the
grounds that women visit it and offer their prayers there.
Talking about the poem immediately preceding Baba’s poem, Schimmel speaks of
the two-line verses employed there as a popular form not infrequently composed
by women. The Taliban thinks that all this is non-Islamic. What they certify as
non-Islamic is naturally also anti-Islamic. This form, called tappas,
described by Schimmel as the most loved folk form in Pashto, was always musical.
She has translated the tappas of Khushal Khan Khattak. Almost all folk
forms of poetry are women-oriented in South Asia. So are they in the land of the
Pakhtuns. Now these forms are threatened. Annemarie Schimmel is dead. Otherwise
one wonders how she would have suffered the destruction of the culture and
traditions of South Asian Islam. She was so fond of the area and its culture.
There is a huge necropolis in a place called Thatta in Sindh. Her admirer once
told me in Karachi that she had on one occasion said, perhaps semi-seriously,
that she would like to be buried in that necropolis. Now, as I remember it, I
feel that it is just as well that, if true, her wish was not fulfilled. For all
one knows, the Taliban would have made it out of bounds for her.
Callous to tradition
It is extraordinary that South Asian Islam should have been so insensitive to
its own cultural traditions. I suppose that this area has generally been so
unmindful of its political and religious culture. A poet’s grave was destroyed
in Gujarat. That was no Taliban’s doing. Then some Sri Rama Sena decided to
announce that the Hindu culture was under threat. The how and why of it remained
mysteriously under wraps. The Sena activists went berserk and Mangalore women
were beaten up. All that is a familiar story. The Bamiyan Buddhas went down to
the butshikans (iconoclasts) at Bamiyan in Afghanistan.
It was always a mystery when and how the South Asians lost their sense of
history. There are perhaps no other people who are so callous to their own
history. As if this wasn’t bad enough, they are now proclaiming a new version of
history. A fellow called Mutalik is now telling me what Hindu culture is. Not
just me, he is proclaiming it to all Hindus. He is an ignoramus. That would not
have been a problem in itself. It is one because he has designed a pop Hinduism
that seems to take Mutalik to be a modern-day Sankaracharya. He lays down what
Hinduism is or, rather, should be. This Hinduism, it would seem, includes
beating up women in the name of "our culture". It is perfectly in order or so
the Vanar Sena has decided.
Rehman Baba, who has been lying there near Peshawar for 300 years, is now
being told that he must pay the price for women praying at his dargah. The
dargah must be devastated. And it was. The Taliban recorded yet another of its
triumphs. Rehman Baba had almost rhetorically asked once: "Who but The God,
powerful, can make the sun rise and set in the sky?" Today we can see that the
sun has set. Rehman Baba’s grave is no longer there. In another few years people
would not be able to show the place where the dargah existed.
Women are now out of the picture. It has been a convention of the South Asian
Bhakti tradition that women were always a part of it. In one stroke the Taliban
activists have destroyed a thousand-year tradition. Mutalik laid down for us
what Hindu culture is. The Taliban have been doing this for a while now. They
proclaim what Islam is or should be. The entire project is frightening. South
Asian religious tradition was always democratic. The culture was cheerful and
colourful here. A certain dry barrenness is taking over.
One is tempted to tell Mutalik and his ilk that religion and culture are
surely threatened, except that it is endangered by them. In fact, we now have a
double threat. One is the fundamentalists who cite the authority and texts to
ban or destroy something. The other is the "pop religion" which decides the
cultural mores for everyone, especially for women. In both cases it is an
allegedly fundamentalist ignorance that is leading to violence. In this
particular case, as I have stated, there is a systematic attack on South Asian
Islamic practices. The dargahs, the music there, the multi-religious and
multi-gender worshipping there were a major source of their popularity. And who
would forget the music?
Bent on self-destruction
The near suicidal tendencies that obtain in fundamentalism are contributing
to the destruction of this tradition. In May 2005 the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba was
allegedly responsible for the destruction of the 14th century shrine of Saint
Zainuddin Wali of Ashmuqam. There was an unsuccessful effort at destroying the
shrine of a mystic of North Kashmir, Ahad Bab Sopore, and so on.
We seem to be on a self-destructive trip. This part of the world has had an
unfortunate history of self-destruction. The greatest tragic epic of the world
is the Mahabharata that is perhaps the first depiction of such
self-destruction. This kind of self-ruination always brings in its wake a
terrifying celebration. We are presently witness to that kind of perverse
celebration. In a sense, destruction of these shrines or mosques is destruction
of history. That all this should happen here and all these enthusiasts should
not realise what they are doing is mind-boggling. Maybe cultures, in a suicidal
mood, have no time or interest in history or religion and spirituality.
Maybe there is little use wailing over this. This destructive instinct seems
to follow us everywhere. At the end of the Mahabharata, at the end of
that monstrous destruction, the sage Vyasa has already voiced the futility of
shouting against it. "I stand here, my hands raised, and shout. Nobody listens
to me." Or that Pashto poet, Khattak, says unto god: "I call you. But you do not
respond."
Are we living in the unresponsive times?
(GP Deshpande is a well-known commentator on literary and political affairs.
This article was published in Economic & Political Weekly, April 4,
2009.)
Courtesy: Economic & Political Weekly;
www.epw.org.in |