In Search of Shiva- Monolith and its Multitude of Narratives

In Search of Shiva- Monolith and its Multitude of Narratives

I discovered Haroon Khalid by chance- serendipity.  Or is it really Serendipity, that my agnostic soul tries to define something which my mother would have said- Destiny or Karmic Connection.
In fact now if I state the happenings of the last few weeks- you may decide what you would like to call it (and in fact it may also be so that only now I am citing the incidents connecting them to this serendipity)

The Azaadi lecture series over the JNU row

The Debate regarding Nationalism and Identity

Reading Amir Malouf in a group and my melt-down at a particular moment

The ICC Twenty- Twenty (Men’s) World Cup and Pakistan and India’s face-off

The decision of declaring Holi as a national holiday in the Sindh province of Pakistan

The last had brought back to me memories of my PG classes. My Professor Dr. Rita Kothari who was involved in post partition migration studies relating to the Sindhis had exposed me to various ideas, cultures, possibilities, syncretism often suppressed by the majoritarian aggression. One of her works Unbordered Memories- Sindhi Stories of Partition has the story (translated from Sindhi to English) by Amar Jaleel viz. Holi. The story tells of an old man in Sindh Pakistan, in his effort to explain a young audience as to what is Holi and the Happiness surrounding it, feels at loss of words- How could he explain something which none has seen, and ask them to lament the practice. In fact when I read about the celebration of Holi in Sindh Pakistan, this story came to my mind. I tried googling to find facts and fragments as to how they are thinking of celebrating. Will they be jubilant or afraid lest the extremists who have sworn to wipe out any paganism avenge this act against the “faith”?  I couldn’t find much, except few quotes of people when asked saying they are very happy. But what about the stories or narratives.  Those who had seen Holi and those who may experience this for the first time. Will the festival be of Holi or that of recognition of one's rights for practice of culture or faith- something with Jinnah had promised once? The white of the green and white flag of Pakistan covers one-quarter of the total flag area and stands for the religious minorities of the country. Why do we then always look at Pakistan as a land of failures, something gone awfully wrong, that of religious extremism, or bearded mullahs and conspiring and conniving terrorists? Finally an article on scroll (again serendipity- article link-http://scroll.in/article/805483/a-piece-of-cloth-ties-three-distinct-religious-traditions-together-in-pakistan) helped me to discover Haroon Khalid and his works. Sitting at the airport, waiting for a flight delayed by hours (thanks to the beefed up security post Brussels and the doubtful, suspecting CISF teams), I decided to look into my Kindle and find Haroon. I had to push Sumitravanti aka Mitro away from my mind for a while (was reading Mitro Marjani by Krishna Sobti) and decided to know about Folk Religious Practices in Pakistan. (Quite a long story to explain serendipity).

It is a wonderful piece of work- suddenly presenting before us the kaleidoscope viz, Pakistan, where people call the river Chenab as the river of love- Heer Ranjha, Soni- Mahiwal all had their stories of love and lost along Chenab. And so did the folk religions.  The rivers framed the Indus Valley and the narratives have to happen along the river.

The book starts at an interesting premise showing the angry protests against the “considered blasphemous” movie Innocence of Muslims- a picture of Pakistan too known to us at this part of the subcontinent and slowly Haroon takes us for visits to these wondrous magical places, which defy the very idea of Pakistan painted in monochromes.

We get to read about the Shrine of Baba Mast, where an annual fair goes one visited by eunuchs all over the place- dancing, swirling like dervishes. Baba Mast a Sufi pir, had embraced the eunuchs, his shrine being the place where they feel welcome, emancipated and loved. That is also what defined Sufism- rebellion against the normative society. Bulle Shah was said to be serving as a servant to a dancing girl. In the Baba Mast Shrine, one of the delicacies served is Chatna- said to be the male version of chutney. Haroon writes-“in the shrine of eunuchs even the sexuality of the food needed identification”. Haroon takes us to Shrine of Aban Shah, which serves as a shrine of fertility cult- women worship to procreate and offer phallic symbols of wood to the shrine- something the Wahhabis or the Deobandis, the majoritarian, puritanical form of Islam would despise.  Consumption of Hasseesh in these shrines are common (against Islam) and in fact is a “quasi-religion veneration”. Sufism describes Hasseesh as a medium to get lost and one in different forms:

Al-luqaymah-little green bite

Musilat-al-qalb-what binds the heart

Waraq-i-kheyal-leaf of insight

And do they remind us of our bhang during holi? Haroon takes us to the shrine of Peer Abbas Kutiyanali Sarkar- a shrine which loves and reveres dogs –something prohibited and unfathomable in Islam. There are sacred tombs of the legendary dogs Mohsin and Qamar. The shrine however started on the very human act of kindness, when on a day of torrential rain, Peer Abbas gave shelter to a bitch and her pups, who in turn grew fond of the place and protected the dargah. And the rest, it still continues.  We get to know of Raiwind, Jamaat-e Tablighi- a madrassa, people all over the world come to study Quran, renunciating materialism to choose the spiritual. This is in fact one of the largest in the world and have celebrities getting attracted to the Raiwind- the Pakistan cricket team Saeed Anwar followed by Inzamam and later Yousuf Youhana (the only Christian in the team). They call the materialistic life Jahallya, which you are to renounce and never look back. The earliest band- musician of Pakistan Juanaid Jamshed also is a convert to Tableeghi Jamaat- and in case if anyone recalls the movie Khuda Kay Liye by Shoaib Mansoor, Mansoor, recalled his co-musician Junaid Jamshed and his disappointing embrace to the faith. There is also a shrine of crows, showing the earliest Hindu tranditions, ambracing Sufism, where in Hindusim crows link between living and the dead.

The interesting chapter in the one viz. Syncretism in the Mainstream.  Haroon Khalid speaks of these shrines and the people practicing the sect to be small and disparate away from the main cities and can give a false idea that, this is why they are preserved and there is no possibilities of such anomalies in the mainstream. However there are- and one of the biggest example of that is the Eid-E- Milad- celebrating the Birthday of the prophet (something the puritanical and currently resurgent form of Islam is against). Eid- e- Milad- Un-Nabi is few centuries old as a practice and is said to be inspired by the thousand old Hindu tradition of Ram Navami. In fact the Tableegh was happy to continue this ritual, since they feel that the “Hindu Styled lighted and decorative festivals helps on mobilizing people towards the faith”. The second is the kirtan Styled Sikh Music which is said to be inspired from Quawwali. This is the claim of many anthropologists.

The most interesting visit is of course the Shrine of Sahiban at Khweia and the Mai-Heer mosque at Jhang (for Heer the eternal lover). Sahiban, the brave lover of Mirza who eloped and later died in the hands of her brother. Haroon recalls that at Khweiwa, where Sahiban’s mosque stands, every girl or woman seemed to be “Sahiban”- bold, proactive. And moreover having the mosque of a woman who eloped against family with her lover, is itself against the very sanctimonious premise of Islam. However wasn’t that also depiction of Sufism, to be lost in love?

Sahiban's mosque at Khweiwa

The two nation theory, laments Khalid, destroyed the scope of these multiple possibilities. The Pakistani education system is devoid of any cultural and historical understanding of the region. This poses the “danger of a single story”- painted in broad strokes, solving the nationalistic propaganda- something I think we are all very familiar with in recent times in India as well.

I would request all to read this book, at least to discover the scopes of this fascinating syncretism. And the next time when we speak of women and oppression in terms of Burqa in Pakistan (or any Islamic country) we can also then think of Sahiban’s or Heer's Mosque and the respect for her not as a disloyal daughters bringing ignominy but as someone, who had the courage to love and follow her mind, the eunuchs at the shrine of Baba Mast and their fierce dances like Shiva’s Tandav and the River Chenab lovingly criss-crossing the country telling tales of love and longing.