July 12, 1999
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MUSIC Kabir in the Time of Kargil As the guns boom across the border, the country celebrates the humanist message in the verses of the saint poet. By S Kalidas
It is another matter that like the 50th anniversary of our Independence the DoC again woke up to Kabir's 600th year of birth when it ends: the widely accepted date of Kabir's birth being June-July 1398 according to a couplet by Dharamdas, a prominent disciple of Kabir. The Kabirpanthi sect of Banaras (where he is believed to have been born) and Magahar (near Gorakhpur, where he died) celebrated the event last year, as did some state governments, including those of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. But that should not detract from the wide canvas and variety of the fare put up by the DoC in the capital -- a seminar on Kabir and his times at the National Museum; a play Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein (by Alakhnandan Natya Mandli) and Panthi dance (by Devdas Banjare and party) at Dilli Haat and the crowning event at the Siri Fort auditorium comprising Kabir songs sung in folk, popular and classical idioms. At least two recording companies -- Music Today and BMG Crescendo -- have released double cassette albums of Kabir's poetry sung by leading classical vocalists Madhup Mudgal and Neela Bhagwat. Mudgal's two volumes were released by Vice-President Krishan Kant at the Siri Fort function. At every time of social discord and distress, this land has given birth to seemingly weak and marginal voices that worked the wonder of bringing back solace and sanity. Oddly enough, often these voices came not from the citadels of power or the temples of high religion but from the weakest sections of India's social fabric. If anything they mocked and subverted the power equation through their simple songs and couplets on the themes of human relationship with the absolute, of love and of non-violence. Thus the Bhakti movement started as a humanising force within the Brahminical Hinduism with Jayadeva in the 12th century and continued till Tulsidas in the 17th. In its wake, it not only gave voice to the aspirations of the Dalits and the downtrodden but also bridged the Hindu-Muslim divide by absorbing and influencing both these major religions in a matrix of mystical humanism. Its basic tenets were mirrored in Sufism, which although rooted in the Turko-Persian tradition, acquired a form of its own in India. Bhakti poetry is of two kinds: the sagun (meaning with attributes; addressed to a particular god or deity) and the nirgun (devoid of attributes; seeking the formless absolute or the universal self). While saint poets like Meera, Surdas and Raskhan (a Muslim poet who became an ardent devotee of Krishna) are the leading sagun bhaktas, the nirguni line includes Kabir, Gorakhnath and Nanak. Of all the nirguni poets Kabir is not only the most popular but also the most fascinating. They quote him in the bazaars, they discuss him under trees in villages, children memorise his couplets in schools and musicians of all hues sing his mystical songs in fairs, in streets and in concert halls. While most factual details of Kabir's life are shrouded in uncertainty, numerous legends invest his life story with tales of miracles and supernatural powers. What is widely acknowledged is that he was a Muslim julaha (weaver) of Banaras who was accepted by the Hindu Brahmin saint Ramananda as a disciple. Others maintain that he was a mureed (follower) of the Sufi seer Sheikh Taqui. Given his eclectic use of Hindu and Islamic symbols and metaphors in his poetry and his sharp scorn for both the religions in their ritualised form, he may well have been fully exposed to both Sufism and Hindu philosophy. Composing in a composite colloquial language, Sadukri, freely drawing on words and expressions from dialects like Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Brijbhasha, Punjabi and Urdu gave Kabir's verses universal accessibility. They are even today the common man's claim to enlightenment all across northern and central India. And this was the best part of the DoC's function at Siri Fort. From folk singers to temple musicians to popular artist to classical vocalists they managed to present Kabir in the entire musical gamut. This was done with the collaboration of the zonal cultural centres and Music Today. The folk artists were Prahalad Singh Tipania and his friends from Malwa in Madhya Pradesh, Puran Chand Wadali and gang from the Punjabi sufi stream, the inimitable Lakar Khan Manganiar from the deserts of Rajasthan. The Sikh temple tradition was represented by the veteran Bhai Avtar Singh Ragi underlining the prime importance accorded to Kabir in the Guru Granth Sahib. Popular bhajan (devotional song) culture was presented by the king of that genre, Anup Jalota and the classical through the voice of Mudgal. "Kabir is not an easy poet to sing," maintains Mudgal, who has been trained in classical Hindustani music under pre-eminent teachers like Vinay Chandra Maudgalya, Jasraj and Kumar Gandharva. He believes that perhaps because sagun poets like Meera and Surdas were musicians themselves they wrote poetry that was tailored to musical demands. "Kabir being a nirguni and a weaver by profession, his verses are much more difficult to set to tune," he says, adding, "You cannot deluge his verse with musical flourishes or overt orchestration." So Mudgal delves into the intrinsic metre of Kabir's poetry to arrive at his very understated but rhythmically complex style which reminds you of the solitary roving sadhu with his ektara (a simple single-stringed lute) that you might have heard subconsciously somewhere but never registered the presence of. The result might sound a trifle repetitive after a point but like chanting the repetition here is perhaps a device for the songs to enter your innermost consciousness. As Kumar Gandharva used to say, "It is necessary to be able to create a shoonya (void) while singing nirguni." Borrowing another dictum of his guru, the rather self-effacing Mudgal says, "Nothing ever is really new. And if through you old truths find new expression, why claim credit for it?" Kumar Gandharva, of course, had raised devotional music -- especially nirguni songs -- to a level that was all his own. And no one can sing Kabir for a long time without being influenced by or compared to his style. While in Mudgal, his pupil, the influence is understandable, in this album it is also consciously muted. If anything it is in Bhagwat that one hears echoes of Gandharva, even if it is revealed only to the trained ear. Belonging to the Gwalior school of Khayal singers Bhagwat is also reminiscent of predecessors like D.V. Paluskar in her treatment of the bhajan form. But Bhagwat's form has more musical variety and colour. "I have used violin, a foreign instrument, and flute, a folk one, to connote the eclecticism in Kabir," she says. While that may be so the flute all through is much too loud, many decibels over Bhagwat's voice. Bhagwat turned to Kabir "after the horrifying carnage of the Mumbai riots" and believes that Kabir's call for humanist pacifism will be relevant in all times and at all places. "As we face the situation in Kargil, Kabir is always on my mind," she says. Bhagwat has used many musical structures, from khayal-type compositions to light classical and folk. And in her ringing voice her bhajans too have a lasting impact on the mind's ear. If only the boom of the guns across the border could be silenced by the spirit of his songs, Kabir's legacy would be truly realised. |
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There was an element of
profound irony in a poet of dissent being celebrated in the corridors of power. But that
is perhaps also a marker of the coming of age of post-Mandal politics in India. Amidst the
alarmingly shrill rhetoric of war over the Kargil intrusions last week, the Department of
Culture (DoC) of the government of India and several private organisations across the
country turned to the pacifist and mystical message of one of India's most subversive and
popular saint poets, Kabir. 
