Chairperson’s Letter
(from EdelGive Foundation’s Annual Report themed on ‘Imagine’)
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One morning in early 1971, John Lennon sat at his Steinway piano and composed the melody, chords and wrote most of the lyrics of Imagine[1]. Even after 50 years, this song is one of the most covered songs ever, treated as a sort of national anthem and a symbol of the pursuit of world peace. In writing this song, Lennon was making a political statement — for him, underneath Imagine was “The concept of positive prayer. If you can imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion, without this my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God thing, then it can be true.”
Simplicity of message is at the heart of Imagine; however, it acquired the status of a slogan[2], an anthem, because it came during the Vietnam War; on the back of a bitter break-up of the Beatles, it was a pathway for Lennon and Yoko Ono to communicate their vision to the world. The emotional stirrings that the song creates through Lennon’s plaintive, vulnerable vocals, the notes of the piano and beautiful strings have helped establish Imagine as an emblem of both protest and hope.
Over the last few years, as the world has gone through a systematic limitation of space for protest, and a perceptible feeling of the erosion of democratic constitutional values and institutions that uphold them, poetry and song have become a rallying cry for the disenfranchised and marginalised. Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge written in 1979 or Assam’s Miya poetry that emerged 30 years later, have not only become reflections of the fragile relations between state and society but also bold expressions of hope and change. Before leading a mass singing of “We shall overcome” in Atlanta in 1967, the American folk singer and social activist Pete Seeger said, “Songs are sneaky things, my friends. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. The right song at the right time can change history.”
What I find most fascinating though, is that through time immemorial, we have had saints and poets who have helped us imagine a world without fault-lines and urged us to consider living a life of harmony by changing how we behave and perceive our world, our fellow human beings and our own humanity. I first heard Socho Zara by Madan Gopal Singh and his group Chaar Yaar at Khusrau Kabir, a musical event to celebrate the legacy of two of the sub-continent’s greatest poet-saints, Hazrat Amir Khusrau and Kabir Das. Born nearly 150 years apart[3], Khusrau and Kabir represent India’s syncretic culture, the Bhakti movement in Hinduism and Sufism in Islam blending naturally to create a unique spiritual experience for many of us born several centuries later.
But Socho Zara[4] was Madan Gopal Singh’s ode to not only John Lennon and Imagine, but the long, ancient and rich legacy of Bhakti and Sufi thought and practice that is an intrinsic element of the soul of the Indian sub-continent. Madan Gopalji opens Socho Zara with Rumi:
“I am not of India, nor of China, nor of Bulgar, nor of Saqsin,
I am not of the kingdom of the two Iraqs, nor from the dust of Khurasan”
Maulana Jalal-ud-din Rumi or just Rumi as we fondly know him, is celebrated as the greatest mystical poet of any age. Rumi left behind numerous works of spiritual poetry and a famous order of Dervishes called the “Maulavis”, noted for its piety, mystic dances, and its music and songs. But it is the Masnavi upon which his literary fame rests — composed of twenty-six thousand couplets arranged in six books, the Masnavi deals with Sufi philosophy in a series of stories images, symbols, drawn from the Quran, the Hadiths as well as specific tableaus of daily life. Its spiritual maxims and interpretations explore people’s relationship to God as well as to themselves, each other, and the natural world.
Rumi was a devout Sunni Muslim; his poetry is grounded in an Islamic worldview. Its message presents an opportunity for a life with elevated meaning and purpose, by bringing divinity into all our daily activities, no matter how ordinary or mundane. Rumi’s God welcomed all, no matter their professed faith or beliefs, and hence his continuing relevance and resonance.
Rumi’s che tadbīr ay musalmānān verses have been celebrated as an ode to universal brotherhood. But just like Lennon’s Imagine incensed and offended some people with its suggestion of “neither heaven nor hell; above us, only sky”, “no countries, nor religion; nothing to kill or die for”, some have denounced these verses of Rumi as fake and a Western worldview of Sufism. Some also worry about “the erasure of Islam from the poetry of Rumi”. For me, Rumi’s verse that “I am neither Christian nor Jew, nor Gabr, nor Moslem” just cannot be translated literally. Rumi was a great Islamic scholar foundationally, and used his scholarship in unconventional ways, to elevate faith to a space of compassion and love, beyond religious code or ritual.
Of all the early Sufi mystics, Rumi is still widely read and highly popular the world over; indeed, he is often described as the best-selling poet in the United States. But Sufism also inspired many great Sufi mystics in the Indian sub-continent — Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti (1143–1236), Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (1177–1274) and Nizamuddin Auliya (1238–1325) established Sufi orders; Sufi mystic poets, Baba Farid (1173–1266), Amir Khusrau (1253–1325) and Baba Bulle Shah (1680–1758), among many others were born here.
Sufism in the sub-continent merged with local culture, traditions and language — in a time when Arabic, Turkish and Persian were considered the languages of the learned and the elite and used in monastic centres, Baba Farid and Bulle Shah wrote in Punjabi, and Khusrau is credited with fusing the Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Indian singing traditions in the late 13th century to create the qawwali. He spoke Sanskrit and composed in Persian, Hindavi, Braj Bhasha and Urdu.
Baba Bulle Shah expressed his love for the Divine through self-exploratory poetry, like the very popular one below:
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not who I am]
Na main moman vich maseetan
[Nor am I the believer in mosque]
Na main vich kufar dian reetan
[Nor am I in the rituals of the infidel]
Na main pakan vich paleetan
[Nor am I the pure in the impure]
Na main andar bed kitaban
[Nor am I inherent in the Vedas]
Na main rehnda phaang sharaban
[Nor am I present in intoxicants]
Na main rehnda mast kharaban
[Nor am I lost nor the corrupt]
Na main shadi na ghamnaki
[Nor am I union nor grief]
Na main vich paleetan pakeen
[Nor am I intrinsic in the pure/impure]
Na main aaabi na main khaki
[Nor am I of the water nor of the land]
Na main aatish na main paun
[Nor am I fire nor air]
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not what I am]
Na main arabi na lahori
[Nor am I Arabic nor from Lahore]
Na main hindi shehar Nagaori
[Nor am I the Indian City of Nagaur]
Na hindu na turk pashauri
[Nor a Hindu nor a Peshawri turk]
Na main bhet mazhab de paya
[Nor did I create the difference of faith]
Na main aadam hawwa jaya
[Nor did I create adam-eve]
Na koi apna naam dharaya
[Nor did I name myself]
Avval aakhar aap nu jana
[Beginning or end I know just the self]
Na koi dooja hor pacchana
[Do not acknowledge duality]
Mai ton na koi hor syana
[There’s none wiser than I]
Bulle shah kharha hai kaun
[Who is this Bulla Shah]
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not who I am]
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not who I am]
Na main moosa na pharoah
[Nor am I Moses nor Pharoah]
Na main aatish na main paun
[Nor am I fire nor wind]
Na main rahnda vich Nadaun
[I do not stay in Nadaun (city of innocents)]
Bulle shah kharha hai kaun
[Bullashah, who is this man standing?]
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not who I am]
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not who I am]
Interestingly while the Bhakti tradition pre-dates the Sufi tradition by a few centuries, it is the inter-mingling of the two traditions that laid the foundation for Nehru’s favourite metaphor for his idea of India — that of a palimpsest, i.e. a page from a manuscript re-used or altered, but still bearing the visible traces of its earlier form.
The Bhakti tradition, to my mind, was more of a movement — born out of the struggle between the Brahmin temple establishment and ordinary folk around 6th century AD in South India, in a sense unfettering the human spirit from the chains constructed by the gatekeepers to God — making the Divine accessible to all — so-called lower castes and women — hence radical in approach and utterance, bypassing ritual and hierarchy. Bhakti or devotion manifested itself in poetry and singing in the vernacular Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Awadhi, Braj Bhasha and many more!) through the Bhajan, with the devotee expressing a spiritual love for God and charting an individual path to Salvation, irrespective of one’s birth or gender. Over time, as the tradition found its way from Tamil Nadu to Karnataka and thence on to Maharashtra, and later Rajasthan, Punjab and present-day Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal, the intricate relationship between the devotee and God imbibed varying social, political, economic and personal factors, giving birth to sub-traditions and sub-genres. So Khusrau’s qawwalis in honour of Nizamuddin Auliya, Mirabai’s Krishna bhajans and Akka Mahadevi’s Vachana poems in praise of Shiva have equal power to heighten one’s sense of oneness with the Divine, irrespective of one’s religious affiliation. Many of these poet-saints were working-class men and women — carpenters, potters, cobblers, farmers — and expressed their spirituality through metaphors associated with their vocation; for them, their labour performed with mindfulness was superior to simply adoring God. Radical in utterance and approach, their compositions bypassed hierarchy. Writing in their mother tongue, Tulsidas, Eknath, Sant Dnyaneshwar, Tukaram, Janabai, Namdev, Surdas, their words had the power to infuse ecstasy and joy, to celebrate their relationship with a personal God in gurudwaras, mandirs, mandals and dargahs, or alone in solitude.
“Words are the only jewels I possess
Words are the only clothes I wear
Words are the only wealth I distribute among people”
From the abhangs of Sant Tukaram, translated from Marathi by Dilip Chitre
These amazing saint-poets across the Indian sub-continent across centuries urged us to look for God within and to find divinity in our fellow human beings, thus living in peace with nature and all sentient creatures. In that sense, Lennon’s Imagine must be viewed as emanating from this deep, ancient thought. But importantly, in contrast to Lennon’s imagination of a world with no religion, the Bhakti and Sufi traditions, indeed the psalms in the Bible, view God’s love as a levelling force, all-encompassing and for each and every being, irrespective of their denomination. The recent Pew Research Center survey[6] shows India as a highly religious country on every dimension — ritual observance, social identity, belief and practice. Interestingly, many Indians also see themselves as tolerant of other religions and that tolerance comes from a view that respecting other religions is a foundational value of their own religious identity. What then explains the increase in communal discord and hate? This is perhaps where tolerance becomes a highly limiting value; tolerance in a construct where each community must stay in its place, or where drawn boundaries must not be crossed in order to maintain peaceful co-existence is not tolerance. When inter-caste or inter-religion marriages are still not tolerated; when you want one of your own as your neighbour; when your choices of food, attire, sexual preference or manner of living moves from the realm of personal to religious, that is not tolerance. We need to move from tolerance to understanding, accepting and embracing. In fact, “tolerate” as a verb is almost offensive. Diversity is hard work. It means confronting one’s deep-rooted prejudices — it means introspection and self-examination, and accepting the faults in our thinking — being vulnerable, engaging, pausing, correcting. Diversity must come with a true intention to be inclusive, and to wholly integrate to achieve/overcome. Imagining a world of peace and harmony entails embracing many stories, many narratives, many ideologies with an open mind — a plural world. Pluralism welcomes all to the public arena; pluralism believes that asking believers to take off their faiths the instant they enter the public arena is practically impossible and religion can perhaps never be fully separated from politics. Today, there is a massive movement towards diversity and inclusion in all dimensions in corporations and institutions, with definitive research showing the significant positive impact that balanced decision-making has on their financial performance. Why then not extend it whole-heartedly to the social and political sphere of our existence? The fruition of these ideals — not just in theory but also in practice — will require unity in thought and action, a strong and equitable set of guiding principles, and a willingness to work together and collaborate across spectrums to achieve our common goals.
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[1] Lennon was inspired by several poems from his wife Yoko Ono’s 1964 book Grapefruit. It was only later in 2017 that she was formally recognized by the National Music Publishers’ Association as a songwriter for ‘Imagine’.
[2] Since 1971, Imagine has sold an impressive 21 million copies worldwide, and is Lennon’s best-selling single as a solo artist.
[3] Hazrat Amir Khusrau (1253–1325); Kabir’s years of birth and death are unclear; historians are divided between 1398–1448 and 1440–1518.
[4] Listen to Socho Zara here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQdVKdkFhJg
[5] Selected Poems from the Dîvâni Shamsi Tabrîz by R. A. Nicholson, 1898, p. 125; translation, based on the Persian text below.
[6] According to Pew Research Center’s Survey titled, “Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation”.
