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The Sufis of Delhi streets
R. V. Smith
A FESTIVAL of Sufi music is something unique these days even in a place like Delhi, where many of the Sufi silsilas have existed for centuries. Sufism, which is believed to have originated at the time of Hazrat Ali in the formative years of Islam, found the right atmosphere to flourish in India where it later blended harmoniously with the Bhakti movement.
The song of the Sufis is the lyric of love for mankind and for God. The beloved is distant, the way long and tedious. One may hear such songs without realising their significance. The help of sensuous imagery is taken to establish bond with the divine and the love is not physical but mystical. Rumi, Ibn Sina, Ghazali and Sheikh Abul Qadir Jilani are great names in Sufi lore. Omar Khayyam too is one of them.
Generations of the English-knowing public have been brought up to admire the quatrains of Omar Khayyam ever since the translation from the original Persian by Edward Fitzgerald. We all remember the Sultan's turret caught in a noose of light by the hunter emerging in the morning. A loaf of bread, a book of verse, a flask of wine, "and thou beside me singing in the wilderness'' brings to mind the classic imagery of two Oriental lovers under a tree, the handsome youth with trimmed beard, the maiden with contours that would shame the best showgirl of our times. The conception is of the artist and the imagination of the reader but the thought content is of a Sufi which has to be understood in its proper perspective.
The loaf of bread is a physical necessity for everyday life, the book of verse is the word of God, the wine is the heady perfume of love for the divine and the wilderness is the mind where one goes in search of the infinite beloved. There were 30 silsilas or sects of Sufis, of whom 14 have been mentioned by Abul Fazal in his `Ain-e-Akbari'.
The biggest Sufi of India was Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti whose disciples were Khwaja Qutubuddin Bakhtiar Kaki of Delhi and Sheikh Hamiduddin of Nagpur. Then there were Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia, Baba Farid Ganj Shaker, Sheikh Nasiruddin Chirag Delhi and Syed Mohmmad Gesu Dazi or Banda Nawas of Gulbarga.
Other important Sufis were Khwaja Baqi Billah, Miraz Mazhar, Shiekh Ahmed Sirhindi, Sarmad, the Armenian poet and mystic, and in the 18th Century Shah Waliullah, followed by Haji Waris Ali of Deva Sharif and many others of note and fame. Their "qalam'' these days is popularised by singers like Abida Parveen.
The exponents of the Bhakti movement, the Bauls of Bengal, the wandering minstrels of North India and the Kambaliwala babas are all part of the same steam of faith. When the Kambaliwala sings that he cannot reach his beloved on the other side of the swollen river as his blanket would get wet, he refers to the river that is the world and the blanket the human ego. Without sacrificing the ego one cannot reach the eternal beloved, God.
One should be grateful to Sahmat -- the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust -- for organising a festival of Sufi-Bhakti music in the Delhi of the Chishtis and other sects who helped Indian life and thought to merge with the divine. The presence of Allan Fakir in Delhi some years ago was a reminder of the visit of many Sufis to Delhi from Sind over the centuries to preach the message of communal amity. The partition was big hindrance to this process though Sind did not stop breeding Sufis. The Allan Fakirs owe their origin to Shah Abdul Bhatti who set up his own order in Sind. The present fakir is one of that lineage.
Besides Allan, there are Lallan fakirs, Jumman fakirs and so many others carrying on a long tradition, just like the Bauls, the devotees of Namdev and Tukaram, the Kabirpanthis and other Bhakti exponents. In the pre-partition days one remembers a Chunna fakir in black shirt and tehmet, with shoulder-length hair and grizzly beard visiting various localities every Thursday. But his refrain was always the same, "Chunna fakir mai chunna fakir, tere bachhon ki khair mange chunna fakir''. He had a big chimta - tongs -- in his hand which he beat in rhythm with his couplets.
Jumman fakir was much older with snow-white hair, his back bent with age, his flowing beard reaching right up to his chest. His chimta too had aged with him. Jumman was nearly 88 in 1940 and had witnessed the "Mutiny'' as a boy, hiding from the British soldiers looking for the "rebels''. His father died a few years later and soon after his mother.
The only surviving son, he found, refuge at a shrine where the Jumman fakir of Rohilkhand took him under his fold. In old age he too had a "chela'', a younger and stronger fakir who has not been seen after 1947.
The way Allan fakir brought the roof down nine years ago at the function at Mandi House, was to be seen to be believed. Looking like Rasputin, "the Mad Monk of Russia'', the fakir with his turban and bushy beard, exuded the sort of magnetism associated with mystics who have transcended all bonds.
Some of them get so ecstatic at their takia - abode -- that their monosyllabic chant lasts for days on end-like the fakir of Shahjahanpur who made his "takia'' ring with cries of "Mar, mar, mar'' in 1857.
The Pirs of Pagaro enjoy a special status in Sind, so do Allan fakirs. But some of them also have political leanings. One doesn't know if this is true of the present Allan fakir. But he stole the show on New Year's Day in 1993 all right. And his dance would be remembered by many in Delhi for years to come.
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