November 2, 2003

The indigenous music of India was at one time a controversial subject for the Muslims who came from foreign lands. According to Inayat Ilahi Malik (Private Life of Ragas) in the midst of great political tension, Ghiasuddin Tughlaq convened a congress of 235 ulema to discuss the issue if religious law sanctioned the use of music. Nizamuddin Auliya, who attended the Congress, spoke in favour of using music as a stimulant for spiritual purification. He based his argument on the hadith. During the conference, Ilmuddin Multani, who had returned from extensive travel in the Muslim world, gave evidence to the effect that musical assemblies were a common practice in sufi hospices all over the world.

Music was the controversial issue for those sufis who came to the subcontinent. They had to face two initial problems, first which music should be used and in which linguistic form. For a very long time the languages of the new rulers were used for official and private business including religious teachings. We hardly come across any reference to local languages in the early books written in India by the Muslims in Arabic or Persian. The prejudices against the local languages and music were so deep that a 16th century Bengali poet, Muttlib, believed that translating religious book into Bengali was sinful. “I translated Muslim religious books into Bengali. I am sure I committed a grave sin”.(Tariq Rahman’s Language and Politics in Pakistan)

Such were the prejudices backed by the orthodox Muslims and the rulers which were openly flouted by the Muslim sufis who had to establish direct contact with the masses. They used the popular language and the musical traditions. Baba Farid, the earliest poet of the Indus Valley, used the genre of the Doha and he was also accused by the official imam of Ajudhan (Pakpattan) of ‘singing and dancing’ in mosques.

After the sufis adopted the local languages, it was inevitable that they would borrow the musical traditions of the local people too. Perhaps it was the bhajan which was the most popular among the non-Muslims and the kafi is its Muslim alternative wholly used by the Muslim sufis. We find no non-Muslim poet of the kafi worth the name in Punjabi and Sindhi, the main exponents of the kafi as a genre of poetry and music.

Dr Abdul Jabbar Junejo has compiled the book under review with the aim of presenting selected kafis of Punjabi, Seraiki, Sindhi and Katchi which have been popular since their creation. Thus music and poetry both find their place in this book. About music and poetry, Malik says: “The sufis of Sindh such as Shah Latif Bhitai, Sachal Sarmast, Shah Inayat and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar used ragas as the medium of their message of love, peace and virtue. Ragas such as Purbi, Sohni, Ramkali, Bhairvi and Jog, were widely used to sing verses of these poets.”

The strongest tradition of kafi flourished in Punjab where Shah Husain emerged the first and the great poet of kafi. This 16th century poet of Lahore was followed by Baba Bulleh Shah and Khwaja Farid all of whom were wedded to music. Shah Husain and Bulleh Shah used to sing themselves, Shah Husain in classical ragas while Farid’s kafis were sung in the presence of the poet by his private qawwals, singers and dancers.

This small book has been divided into seven chapters dealing with the kafi as a raga. It has kafi as a piece of poetry, selected kafis and introductory notes about the kafi-singers of our time and they include Pathaney Khan, Hamid Ali Bela, Zahida Parveen, Surayya Multanikar, Ustad Muhammad Jumman, Manzoor Ali Khan, Abida Parveen, Master Chandar, Geoni Bai and Bhagat Kanwar Ram.

The publisher of Bulleh Shah’s kafis are devotees of Bulleh Shah and last year they published 35 kafis of Bulleh Shah with their English translation in book form and distributed it free on the urs of the Baba. This year they assigned the job to a well-known writer Maqsud Saqib to select 110 kafis of Bulleh Shah and publish the book for free distribution. Maqsud has rearranged his selection and edited some of the longer pieces, including pieces of other genre, that is, gandhan, dohey atthwar, and baranmah. The two kafis referred to in Junejo’s book are not found in the Kafian and at least one: Ant behr di kal na kai rangi rang banaya is not in Dr Faqir’s collection. Over all it has been beautifully produced.

Kafian
By Dr Abdul Jabbar
Junejo Bazme Saqafat, Langey Khan Library Building, Multan
132pp. Rs70

Kafian Baba Bulleh Shah
Edited by Maqsud Saqib, Abid Mir and Shabbir Ahmad
Self-published. Available from Block 15 # 01-08 Dempsey Road, Singapore 249675. Email: Kashmircarpet@pacific.net.sg
And Suchet Kitab Ghar Chowk, Ganga Ram Hospital, Lahore
210pp. Price not listed

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