Waris Shah’s retelling of Heer’s legend proved to be a unique creative act; it emerged as the grand narrative of Punjab that captured the soul of pastoral and agrarian society spread over thousands of years in its multi-dimensionality.

The saga has in it something for everyone. The element of bard’s vision that has political dimension is usually lost in the magic of his poetry. But if we care to pause and ponder we find that his narrative is replete with manifest and hidden political allusions and references. So much so that description, narration and portrayal of apparently no political characters and situations have an array of hints evoking historical events, personages and epochs meant to create cultural depth, literary impact and aesthetic effect which would tend to enhance the materialist understanding of history. In addition to being a literary device, it also reveals unambiguously the robust historical consciousness of Waris Shah [1722-1798] which helps him in retelling the tale handed down from generation to generation in oral and literary traditions in a materialist manner. The fact might also be a reflection of his times defined by political anarchy, economic chaos, social strife and ruthless foreign invasions.

Eighteenth century was crucial in the history of India and Punjab as on the one hand internal decay, economic slowdown, excessive taxes and administrative collapse paved the way for the rise of hitherto suppressed local forces and on the other tempted the foreign kings, marauders and adventurers to intervene with the sole objective of looting and plundering the resources of state and society. Chaotic but gradual ascendancy of the local socio-political forces striking at the central and regional Mughal authority weakened it which sharpened the appetite of the foreign forces to take advantage of the unstable situation.

Nadir Shah [1688-1747] and Ahmed Shah Abdali [1722-1772] with their invasions decimated apparently unassailable Mughal authority. They tried at the same time to dismantle the emergent power structures of the rebellious ‘infidel’ forces opposed to the Mughals. The invaders inadvertently instead of sapping the fresh energies of the local rebels strengthened their resolve to put an end to Mughal rule as in the aftermath of foreign incursions the empire stood enervated with an irreparable loss of effective authority. Subsequently the power vacuum gave further impetus to the rising forces to demolish what till now seemed impregnable.

“In the highlanders’ tradition Abdali was obsessively given to plunder. His treatment of Punjab weakened the government in Lahore and delivered the various doabs into the hands of Sikh confederacy called misls”, writes Khalid Ahmed in his introduction of Taufiq Rafat’s Bulleh Shah.

An historical perspective is a must to fully understand the Waris Shah’s tale along with the tribulations he experienced in his turbulent times as an erudite materialist scholar with profound socio-political consciousness and immensely gifted poet with highly fecund imagination. His predecessor Bulleh Shah, the poet and mystic, had already dropped an unambiguous hint at the unfolding historical situation in the following words for instance: “…the door of Judgment Day’s torment has been flung open/Punjab is in shambles / the fear of the nethermost hell strikes terror…”. So India and Punjab were the hell that Waris Shah inherited in the 18th century. He tried to build a paradise in the heart of this hell at least at the level of imagination. It’s not for nothing that at the very outset of the legend he paints Takht Hazara, the ancestral abode of the male protagonist Ranjha, as a paradise which would soon get lost in the whirlwind of life’s concrete contradictions. “How can I recount the qualities of Takht Hazara? It’s as if the paradise has descended on the earth”, he says.

How this uncertain world of conflict, strife, dissension and deceit, where predators of all kinds prowled, impacted Waris’s poetry is not difficult to imagine. We find the power of arms and arms of power intertwined and reflected in his narrative. Similes, metaphors, allusions and references related to power and its brutal function sneak into his verses which is not to imply that this wasn’t his choice. A subtle interplay between the conscious and subconscious underpins poetic expression. So the notion of complete separation of the conscious from the subconscious in the poetry is false and thus misleading. So in the case of a genuine poet it’s a matter of having overlapping boundaries between consciousness and subconscious. Let’s now have brief look at how the political embeddedness of Waris Shah’s poetry expresses itself in the tale. Head to toe description of the heroine is usual feature of tale telling [Qissa kari]. It should normally be a sort of expression least affected by war, weapons and trappings of power. But see how the war imagery associated with the uninhibited display of power creeps in the portrait of Heer. “[Her] eyebrows look like a bow from Lahore, the beauty is immeasurable / Khol sits in the edges of eyes, legions of Punjab marching against India… She freely struts and swaggers in women’s commons like the nabob’s roaming elephant on a high”.

In the next stanza we come across these verses: “[She is] an Egyptian sword that deals with crimes, comes out flashing from its scabbard /…Qizilbash executioner, horseman, assassin, gallops out of his garrison attacking”. The portraiture not only shows us the terrific beauty of an aristocratic woman but also drives the poet’s point home that aggression and violence have organic links with the ruling classes. Just look how uprooted and dispossessed Ranjha is taken when Heer introduces him to her father, a powerful tribal chief: “He marched from his place like a military commander striking a kettle drum”. Heer and a bevy of young women assault Kaido, the villain, who sneaks on her. Imagery used to describe Kaido when besieged by girls, is out of this world; “a sahukar’s wealth in a citadel constantly patrolled by Lahore squads”.

Now some direct references to the historical events that took place in the poet’s life. Ranjha sends a secret message to Heer through a girl and addresses her thus: “India, Panjab tremble in dread of Nadir Shah / by my reckoning it’s an earthquake, you caused, for me …You got after me like Ahmed Shah, turned the farmland into a marsh”.

Waris was an adolescent when Nadir Shah devastated Punjab and Delhi. He had a first hand experience of the Punjab being repeatedly ransacked by ruthless Ahmed Shah who was insatiable in his lust for riches.

Note: Death anniversary [Urs] of the poet is traditionally commemorated in the month of Sawan [July 16 to August 15]. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2019