[Reader-list] shahid amin and rahim das

[mahmood farooqui]

apropos Shahid Amin's recent lament for Rahim Das,
here is my own take on the same-published sometime ago
in Mid-Day...

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It is understandable that a land that produces two
thirds of the world’s diamonds is not particularly
crazy about its Ratnas. Since it does not even care
about the Bharatratnas all around us, it is perhaps
hardly worth bemoaning the neglect of the far removed
Navratnas- of Emperor Akbar. I had only recently
claimed for Akbar a central position in the early
Nationalist imagination. The other day I also
witnessed an aspect of its reality in the Nation. This
idea of Akbar, it seemed afterward, was very far
removed from the reality of the historical ruler- as
also from the perception of Akbar in today’s times.
The physical attestation of the hollowness of the idea
and the reality of the day is provided by the state of
the tomb of one of his Navratnas in Delhi. 

The corporate-aided splendour of Humayun’s tomb and
the bustle of Nizamuddin in Delhi overwhelm this
forlorn, unvisited and unknown tomb a little to its
South. It is the tomb of Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khana, one
of the nobles, a Navratan, of Akbar’s court. The
structure is dripping from all sides- it is not merely
dilapidated or crumbling, it also bears scars of a
long history of pillaging. Beginning with Safdarjang,
who tore out slabs and stones from the façade to use
for it for his own tomb? This atrophying, non-descript
monument, one of the dozens that the hugely
over-decked city of Delhi need not think about twice
before abandoning, concretizes the dissipation of that
idea, the rejection of the ‘invented’ memory imposed
by the Nationalist movement. 

Incidentally, this Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khana otherwise
also happens to be known as Rahim Das. The fourth
member of the text book quartet of Sur, Tulsi and
Kabir, Rahim Das has become another unfortunate icon.
A part of the educational system’s effort to construct
ideal-idols, suitable for nation-building. In this
case, under a heading called the revolutionary Bhakti
poets. Like the others he too has become an object of
veneration, a sugar-coated saint who wrote saintly
poetry. No doubt, the language/dialects Rahim Das
wrote in, Awadhi and Braj, produced a large amount of
devotional and religious poetry. But not all the
poetry written in those tongues is religious, nor is
all of it written by saints. 

Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khanan was in fact very far from
being a saint. He was every inch the same blue-blooded
Chaghtai Turk whose father Bairam Khan had protected
(and in some accounts eyed) the precocious Empire
Humayun had left for Akbar. A high ranking Noble of
Akbar’s court, a soldier and administrator, as worldly
a life as it could be. He was also an aesthete and a
cultural figure of lavish proportions. A pundit of
Sanskrit, Braj, Arabic, Persian and Turkish, he wrote
Diwans, that is collections of poetry in all of those
languages. In addition, he interacted with a very wide
range of contemporary artists, poets, scholars.
Admission to his soirees and salons were the proof of
arrival for poets and writes from near and afar- from
Benaras and Gaya as well as Shiraz and Bijapur.

But this Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khana of historical
proportions and the Rahim Das of the school texts are
mutually alien figures today. Rahim Das is a Braj
poet, which is defined as classical Hindi, yet Hindi
was the term used also used for Urdu language of the
eighteenth century, as also for Indians (as in the
common title Al-Hindi) as opposed to Hindus. Consigned
and now confined to the dusty, hoary and ancient
departments of Classical Hindi, Rahim Das the robust
Braj bhasha poet, and Abdur Rahim the ambitious Noble
have lost their voice. 

Along with him six centuries of poetry, beginning with
Gorakhnath and ending in the nineteenth century, in at
least eight different registers and poetic traditions
have thus been stacked up in one single kabari bazaar
of an archive. Jayasi and Tulsi, Raskhan and Qutban,
Manjhan and Nanak, Dadu and Raidas, Bihari and
Bhushan, supremely gifted individuals, have become
identical and replaceable tags for the invocation of
the greatness of a uniform and singular medieval
India. In some measure this is undeniably the fault
also of the Urduwallahs (past and present) who have
completely abandoned pre-seventeenth century
Hindustani poetry. 

On the other hand, this lamentation for lost cultural
treasure is not much different in principle from the
construction of an ideal past by using the figure of
Akbar. For people sift, chop, change, in a word chose
their accoutrements- cultural, ritual, literary- as
they go along. The lament at the neglect of some
artifacts and figures presumes their worthiness and
relevance to a people, who for a variety of reasons,
evince absolutely no interest in it, as a collective
body. Who is mourning what then? 

Of course, if it had so happened that Hindi had not
become the National(ist) language and Braj and Awadhi
and Dakkani and Magadhi and Bhojpuri had been
understood and respected as they were-full blooded and
independent poetic traditions-these poets may have
been read outside the class rooms as well. And if by
chance, the contemporary speakers of the remnants of
these dialects, the rural people living in the remote
hinterlands, were more powerful or more organized,
their status too would be far higher than it is today.
Supposing they received Royal patronage in the same
measure as what became modern Urdu perhaps the Dohas
and Chaupais and Kabits of Rahim would be as well
known today as they certainly deserve to be. After
all, power and state patronage may also have something
to do with the survival and popularity of artistic and
literary forms. But once that continuity has been
broken, can it ever be resuscitated?

Rahiman dhaga prem ka, mat torau chatkaaye
Tute to phir jurai nahin, jurai gaanth pari jaaye.



	
		
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