Waris Shah (1722-1798) was not the first to compose the legend of Heer. It was Damodar Das Gulati from Jhang, a poet as great as Waris Shah, who wrote the tale in the late sixteenth century which remains till date an unsurpassable document on at least two counts. One, he created two characters, male and female, that became the immortal symbols of unbounded love cultivated with care and conscious defiance against the oppressive structures of patriarchy; two, he built an unmatchable narrative of medieval Punjab layered with stunningly insightful details of cultural, sociological and anthropological life not found elsewhere. His narrative is additionally a compendium of traditions, norms, rituals, social values and cultural practices that defined Punjab in his times.

Waris Shah inherited the story. He announces at the very outset of his magnum opus that he is going to retell the tale from a fresh angle. “Friends came and proposed to me, let’s make Heer’s love anew / Tale of the whole bent of this love, with a skillful grace brew…” (translation by Muzaffar Ghaffaar), he says. He didn’t need to create the main protagonists anew as they were already breathtakingly multidimensional, perfectly rounded and emblematic of defiance and struggle. What he created wonderfully new was a fresh historical context in which he placed his narrative where we find a different Punjab, a society much changed from that of the sixteenth century defined by Emperor Akbar’s liberal and inclusive vision that accepted diversity as the historical reality of subcontinental society.

The step augmented the efforts aimed at separating the state from faith to the chagrin of the conservative forces. Such a radical departure from tradition was an anathema to the clergy and sizable segment of ruling aristocracy of foreign extraction whose raison detre supposedly was their faith which placed them notches higher than the majority of population, Hindus and converted Muslims.

After Akbar’s death, his progressive policies were gradually reversed. “Akbar’s successors turned the compass around and Islam came back in full strength of its rigid orthodoxy. Jahangir and Shah Jahan ruled sternly to the Islamic tenets…The steady progress of Islam was probably fatal to the Mughal Empire. Aurangzeb, the last great emperor attempted a full scale retreat from the conciliatory policy of his predecessors and wrecked the empire in the process. Stern and austere, fanatically convinced that Islam was the only true faith, he forgot that the Mughal Empire was, in fact, just as much Hindu as Muslim. He forgot that if Akbar had not made friends with the powerful Rajputs and had not enlisted the services of countless Hindus, the empire would never have survived his reign…,” writes Amaury De Riencourt in his ‘The Soul of India’.

Waris Shah witnessed a fractured empire ruled by Aurangzeb’s successors, Shah Alam and others. What was left of Mughal prestige and semblance of authority was decimated by Nadir Shah, a ruthless Iranian invader, paving the way for an unstoppable rise of long suppressed local forces represented by the Sikhs and the Marathas. As a retaliatory measure, the enfeebled ruling elite on the one hand pledged to uphold stridently its exclusive identity and on the other reinforced its alliance with the orthodox Muslim clergy. This alliance eventually proved to be a suicide pact.

Waris with his deep social awareness and broad historical consciousness situates his new narrative in this historical context that enables him to expose the conflicts and contradictions arising out of an inability of the ruling class to square with the ground reality that emerges as a result of their exclusionary view of a diverse society. Waris’ unique literary strategy is; build up and demolish. He first builds up characters, events and happenings as they are perceived and then demolishes them by laying bare their inner conflicts and contradictions. A few examples will suffice. This is how he describes Takht Hazara, the ancestral town of the main male protagonist:“First let’s talk of Takht Hazara, where in bloom Ranjhas are flourishing/ Spruce youths wanton and wayward, in beauty each other excessing …/ Which quality of Hazara shall I recount, as if paradise on earth descending”. In one of the stanzas that follows he demolishes this paradise by pointing to a serpent in it: “Father would love, brothers do enmity, father’s fear restraining / Hurling hidden taunts like a snake, his vitals they are stinging”. Ranjha’s father dies and the issue of dividing the ancestral property comes up. Here he reveals a stark contrast between the appearance and reality of those entrusted with the task of administering justice. The collusion between the state officials (a Muslim cleric/ judge, and council of elders) and the influential exposes the justice system for what it is. “Lord judge called all councilors, of the brothers gets lands measured, apportioned / Giving bribes become the inheritors of the earth, barren land to Ranjha portioned…”.

When dispossessed, Ranjha leaves home and walks to an undetermined destination he stops at a town. Now see how magnificent is the mosque where he intends to stay for a night and how mean is the mullah who manages its affairs. “The mosque, example of the original home, the plan from Kaaba appropriated / As if Aqsa’s other sister, perhaps light from the plinth was raised…” And this is how the teacher of religion looking at the appearance of a harmless young traveler who is in search of shelter reacts: “On seeing Ranjha’s long hair the mullah said, profane one, be off, fie! / No place for reprobate here, get rid of long hair, be God approved thereby …. Mosques are the houses of God, here we don’t allow the profane / If a dog or beggar is polluted, tie him up, with whips cane….”.

We see the recurring pattern of building and demolishing and describing and exposing throughout his narrative with overwhelming dramatic force. Waris first graphically narrates and then debunks the myth of class structure and patriarchy. He exposes how a nexus of interests between the ruling elite and the clergy helps maintain an exploitative social structure at the expense of the exploited and the oppressed. He reveals how patriarchal oppression is slyly legitimised in the name of cultural values, social mores and religious ideology. Class oppression coupled with gender repression backed by religious and cultural ideologies is his main concern as a highly conscious poet gifted with a vast and vivid imagination. Additionally, the broad cultural sweep of his narrative remains unmatched till date in our literary history. And perhaps this is what has made him not only our greatest poet but also the bard of the Punjab.

Not surprising that Waris Shah is still our elite’s bête noire. They can’t afford to celebrate him even after three hundred years. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2022