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Kabir is an intensely personal affair. It could also get highly political.
His is a tradition that defies definition, but is open to interpretation and questioning.
Some come to him through music, others from faith.
Some years ago, I heard a CD of Prahlad Singh Tipaniya, the Luniyakedhi-village-based, wandering Kabir singer. The disc also had bhajans by Kaluram Bamaniya, another singer from the Nirgun (formless God) tradition of Malwa.
The songs did make an initial impression on me. And once I heard Tipaniya in person in Mumbai a couple of years ago that very impression had become permanent.
Since then, I have made a couple of trips in and around Dewas, Madhya Pradesh, to experience the power of Kabir and the living tradition of Nirgun singing.
According to Linda Hess’s masterly book Bodies of Song (Permanent Black, 2015), an overview of the Kabir tradition, the mystic poet-saint was born six centuries ago, but it is “likely that he never wrote”.
But the song of Kabir, an amalgam of song over the years, is a thriving tradition in the villages of Malwa — and it’s never really required to be written down.
During the February 19-22 yatra, an intense affair of song and dance, Tipaniya also announced to his audiences in different places that space had been arranged at the Kumbh Mela in Ujjain for mandalis or groups that sing Kabir.
“Three mandalis will be singing each day. That means that there will be a total of 90 mandalis . Seventy have already registered with us,” he said.
So that gives you one estimate of the extent of how Kabir lives on in the villages of Malwa. And it is slowly radiating outwards from the rustic settings to open, more urban spaces.
Many are learning from wandering in the villages, others have learnt and are singing in other places.
A couple of the 50-odd city-dwellers who came for the Kabir Yatra that traversed through Luniyakhedi, Maksi, Dewas, Pipaliyarao and Bhopal, have stayed back to learn Kabir.
Through her collaboration with Tipaniya, former journalist Shabnam Virmani has produced the formidable Kabir project – a collection of films, books and CDs — that explain and contextualise Kabir and his song in the sub-continent.
A young band called Kabir Café — comprising Neeraj Arya, Mukund Ramaswamy, Raman Iyer, Viren Solanki and Britto KC — whom I first heard in the Mumbai, are taking Kabir’s songs to a new, foot-tapping audience.
Time and again during the yatra, Raman Iyer apologised for any “mistakes” they made while singing favourites like Zara Halke Gaadi Hanko Mere Ram Gaadiwale in front of the home crowd.
Mukund and Raman have given up jobs to sing Kabir while Viren is just 19 years old. If Tipaniya and Bamaniya have one sound, then Neeraj and his band have quite another – and both are so appealing.
Kabir is super at putting you down. And makes you appreciate your own limitations.
mat kar man guman, mat kar kaya ko ahamkar
kesariya rang udi jaye lo, gulabi rang udi jaye ho
( Don’t be proud
Of your power, don’t admire
Your body. The golden colour
Will fly, the rosy colour
Will fly )
(This and other translations taken from Linda Hess’s Body of Song )
To me, it’s a great message of equality. That all things are ephemeral and this too shall pass; simple, to the point. Direct and hits home.
Pothi padh padh jag mua, pandit bhaya na koi
Do akshar prem ka, padhe so pandit hoi
( Reading books upon books, everyone died
and none became wise.
Four letters: love
Read those and be wise )
There is, really, no end to his questions, inquiry and criticism. Verse after verse, Kabir is raising questions about self, society and organised religion.
In that sense, had Kabir lived now, he might well have been charged with sedition amidst the intolerant atmosphere that surrounds us!
In many ways, the growth of societies rests with those who raise questions, those who are not satisfied with the status quo, and those who are seekers in both the personal and political realms.
You may come at Kabir from different directions, but it is the spirit of freedom and questioning of tradition that makes him stand out.
There is something about the Malwa region — in the very heart of India — that draws people to Kabir and the singers who perform without the worry of the existence of tomorrow.
For the young artists of Kabir Café, a couple of whom abandoned lucrative careers in engineering and advertising to sing Kabir, it is a search for meaning that has just begun.
For others like Prahlad Singh Tipaniya (God knows how many Kabir bhajans he can sing) it’s a happy twilight zone in which he’s aware that Kabir and his song are no longer confined to the Malwa region.
In Mumbai, an eclectic community has been organising an annual Kabir festival. Given that some of the volunteers/organisers are known to this writer, one can assert without fear of contradiction that they are firm and lifelong friends of Kabir, his verse and song.
In Pipaliyarao village, one of the venues of this year’s Malwa Kabir Yatra, the scene was typical.
A shamiana had been pitched close to a Kabir smarak (memorial), and a few hundred people were waiting for the song to begin. Tipaniya was the MC.
Kaluram Bamaniya could manage just one bhajan since he had to drive a bunch of singers to the Indore airport to catch a flight. Mooralala Marwada, Tipaniya and Kabir Café were big hits.
The mood of song and dance was so infectious that a woman police inspector, probably around to ensure that “all is well”, decided to join the band of women dancing to the bhajans.
Later, she came up to me and asked whether I had taken a picture of her dancing with the others. Unfortunately, I had not. She was quite disappointed.
To use a Hindi phrase, there was no habad dhabad (rush, haste). People had time on their hands and all they wanted was to listen and dance when they felt like it.
Many are singing along, they know both verse and chapter.
In her book, Bodies of Song , Linda Hess makes a powerful point on how technology has helped stretch the oral tradition:
"… texts and tunes are travelling across far-flung suddenly – by air as much as on the ground. There has always been movement of songs from region to region, but it has never been this fast – texts and styles coming whole cloth, not piecemeal and gradual as in the past … the bullock-cart of oral transmission has turned into a supersonic plane."
I leave you with one of my favourite Kabir refrains:
mann lago mero yaar fakiri mein
( This mind, my friend, has learned to love owning nothing )
It’s a pointer to a direction where owning less, or nothing, is extolled. That living simply is a good option.
It’s quite a Gandhian approach and also it’s ecologically correct.
Kabir is nothing less than a kuan (well) where you can find pretty much what you seek.
