It may be difficult to separate the material and the historical from the spiritual and the metaphysical in the classical Punjabi poetry as we see a lot of intermingling of diverse experiences that defines the component of poetic tradition. But still for the sake of critical analyses one can differentiate between different strands that form the fabric of the classical poetic world. There are certain genres that stand out as vehicles of materialistic and historical consciousness such as ‘Qissa’ (tale/legend) ‘Var’ (Epic) and ‘Dhola’ (ballad).
It seems very intriguing that a great spiritualist and highly sophisticated metaphysician, Baba Guru Nanak, was the first to blaze the trail with his verses on the concrete events which proved to be of great historical consequences not only for Punjab but also for the entire subcontinent. He was witness to Babar’s invasion of Punjab which resulted in the ‘bloodiest shame, the wildest savagery’.
Babar, when resisted at Emenabad (now a suburb of Gujranwala), ordered a general slaughter of the population. His soldiers put anybody and everybody to sword who came their way. Nobody was spared.
Hindus and Muslims met the same fate. Guru Nanak in his great anguish wrote his ‘Babar Vani’, a heart wrenching poem in four parts, giving voice to the people’s suffering and their utter helplessness in the face of barbaric onslaught. “After having taken Khurasaan under his wings, he (Babar) terrified Hindustan-- People were so battered that they cried in despair/ did this not evoke pity, o Lord?—With a bridal procession of sin, he came marching from Kabul and demanded our land as his wedding gift-- There were wives of Hindus, of Turks (Muslims), of Bhattis and of Rajputs/the robes of some were torn from head to foot, the dwellings of others were their places of cremation.—Wealth and beauty which ensured luxurious lives for them have now become their bane/Dishonoured and with ropes round their necks, they were carried away by the soldiers”. Such was the Mughal glory!
Damodar Gulati composed the tale of Heer and Ranjha and made it an iconic saga that continues to haunt Punjab despite all the social and cultural transformations it has undergone.
The imaginative reconstruction of the story is grounded in the historical and material reality of the society so deeply that it has moved the poets’ imagination generation after generation.
On the one hand it defies the hierarchic structures of all kinds and on the other epitomises the undying love that naturally exists between man and woman. And that is the reason it has been re-told in different time periods by luminaries such as Muqbal, Waris Shah and Charag Awan, to name a few.
Heer Ranjha is a story of this world and earthly love which defies the established order that denies the freedom of choice to human beings in the name of tradition which protects the exploitative edifice of caste and class with the help of the state. How and why mystic poets appropriated the metaphor of Heer Ranjha as a pointer of their spiritual experience will be discussed some other time. Pilu and Hafiz Barkhurdar penned the thrilling tale of young lovers, Mirza Sahiban, who resisting the oppressive socio-cultural order stood their ground till they were brutally killed in the famous wild Sandal Bar. Hafiz Barkhurdar at the very outset declared that what he intended to compose was the story of earthly love which had nothing to do with otherworldly mumbo jumbo. Other love stories such as Sassi Punnu and Sohni Mahinwal written by Hashim Shah and others fall in the same category. All the storytellers are mainly concerned not with the idea of abstract love but rather with the concrete human relationship shaped by socio-economic conditions driven by class imperatives. They lay bare the society which suffers from the fear of freedom.
The stories in fact reflect the critical socio-historical consciousness that exposes the sacred hollowness of the societal norms evolved at the cost of human emancipation; individual and collective.
‘Var’ (epic) usually deals with historical events and personalities. Of all the epic poems, the monumental and the most celebrated is ‘Nijabat Di Var’ written by poet Nijabat on the Nadir Shah’s invasion of India in the eighteenth century which not only devastated Punjab but also unhinged the vast Mughal empire.
Nijabat’s Var is uniquely superb in its historical significance and poetic merit. Nijabat has the sharp mind of a historian and the fecund imagination of a poet. He is a colossus who stands astride heaven and earth; nothing above and below can escape his eye. He knows exactly how things move at the camp of Nadir Shah and at the royal court of Delhi. He portrays in a masterly fashion all that matters; the courtly intrigues and factionalism, the enfeebled Mughal king and his gutless generals, ambitious and predatory nature of the invaders, people’s resistance and suffering, patriotism and treachery, manners of disgraced royal ladies, cry of the desperate peasant woman and unusual valour of Bairagis (Hindu ascetics). His hunger for minutiae is insatiable and his passion for poetic vigour is unmatchable. His is the voice of the voiceless people caught between their effete king and a brutal invader. The other well-known Var is that of Muzzafar Khan, the ruler of Multan who fought Sikh intruders in the reign of Maha Raja Ranjit Singh. It is a poetic narrative that exposes the internal conflicts of 19th last great epic is ‘Jang Hind Punjab (Indo Punjab war), composed by Shah Mohammad in 1840s after the death of Ranjit Singh, on the war between Punjab’s army and East India Company which had already captured the rest of India. It’s an elegy on sad demise of sovereign state of Punjab brought about by internal and external intrigues.
‘Dhola’ is a loose poetic structure which at times reads like contemporary poem. It usually deals with the local events, tribal feuds and vendettas. The poets of Dhola may portray a local freedom fighter and a quisling, a brave peasant and an ungenerous lord, a brigand and a holy man with equal facility. They chronicle the day today life of the people as it actually is there out on the streets or in the fields.
If you are interested to discover the materialistic world view, critical consciousness and social reality of our society, you will have to unearth the treasure trove called Qissa, Var and Dhola which have a larger repertoire of socio-historical trends than all other literary writings put together. Nothing can be more revealing than a concrete experience rendered concretely in a verse.