[Reader-list] in search of the bhands

[Yousuf]

Dear Mahmood
Very interesting read on the Bhands. I think the
question of why we treat them with such disrespect has
something to do with how we have treated all our
traditional artists - what caste they belong to?
Meerasis, dhadis and so on have always remained at the
lowest rung of the society (I even heard terms like
Chooda-chamar for musicians in Pakistan/Punjab). Any
"respectable" family man or woman going to learn
traditional music is always denounced as going the
meerasi way - the most disrespectable profession. Then
there are layers and layers of castes between the
classical gavayyas and the qawwals, the bhands, and so
on. I even know one extended family in Delhi where
some people practice khayal while some others are
qawwals - the khayaliyas always disown the qawwal part
of their family since its a different class.

But it would be interesting to compare our traditional
bhaands to the new bhands appearig on Star-TV's
Laughter Challenge. Fancily staged comedy shows are a
new craze on every TV channel. Difficult to see the
difference between the traditional bhands and Jhony
Lever.

Yousuf

--- mahmood farooqui <mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Searching for the word Bhaand on google brought
> these two results-
> 
> "He is no more than a common bhaand that has
> entertained us , got
> money in return and is enjoying without a care for
> the poor masses of
> this country
"
> 
> "That he is willing to do anything for money - which
> includes jumping
> like a monkey in movies and dancing like a bhaand (
> a term used by
> himself )
"
> 
> Surely, a term which can bring disparagement on two
> of our greatest
> superstars must be highly derogatory. And the
> commonest connotation of
> Bhand is hugely derogatory. One uses the term,
> always, to run things
> or people down. So what does the term bhaand mean?
> 
> Here is the definition given in a nineteenth century
> Urdu dictionary.
> 
> BHAAND-mimic, jester, those singing buffoons who
> sing and dance and do mimicry.
> 
> A related term is Bhaand bhagatiye, about which
> there is a couplet
> from the eighteenth century poet Mir Hasan-
> 
> Kiya bhaand aur bhagatiyon ne hujoom
> Hui aahe aahe mubarak ki dhoom
> 
> In a contemporary Hindi dictionary, the meaning of
> the word Bhand has
> expanded to include, other than buffoonery, the
> sense of a shameless
> person, hence Bhandgiri is explained as
> 'shamelessness.' Over the last
> one hundred years Bhands, never really respectable
> to start with, have
> suffered further abasement.
> 
> Now, listen to this story about the leader of Bhands
> in late
> nineteenth century. Shooting a gun in Urdu, is
> described as goli
> daaghna, hence bandooq daagh. The greatest poet of
> the day Dagh
> Dehlavi said something nasty to the leader of the
> Bhands. Ustad had no
> choice but to suffer in silence. Some weeks later,
> there was a
> function at which Dagh was the chief guest and Ustad
> was on the stage.
> Promptly, he called a man on the stage, handed him a
> gun, pointed him
> to Dagh and said, shoot. The man obviously
> hesitated. Ustad said, abe
> daagh, followed it with, haramzaade daagh, and then
> with ullu ke
> pathhe daagh and suchlike until Dagh got up and ran
> away. Ustad chased
> him to the bazar and Dagh, obviously, learnt better
> than to cross a
> Bhand.
> 
> Yes, ladies and gentleman, this byword for cheapness
> and debasement
> once described artists of a caliber that would put
> contemporary
> legendary bhaands like Jay Leno and David Letterman
> to shame. Bhands
> were mimics, lampoonists, satirists, outspoken
> commentators on the
> affairs of the day, stand up comedians, masters of
> pun, sarcarsm,
> double entendre and performance. And look how we
> serve them.
> 
> The only historian who considered Bhaands worthy of
> description was,
> predictably, the great chronicler of nineteenth
> century Lucknow, Abdul
> Halim Sharar. In Guzishta Lucknow, Sharar states,
> "The Bhands are a kind of National Satirists, and
> they performed the
> same function here as was done by the Spectator and
> Tatler in England.
>  Dehli's Karela Bhand was legendary at the time of
> Mohammed Shah.
> Their jokes, sacrcasm and mimicry is legendary. Once
> a Nobleman in
> Lucknow gifted a shawl to a bhand, it was very old
> and tattered. He
> took it and began to pore into it, turning it
> around, looking closely.
> Somebody asked what are you looking at, he said
> there is something
> written here. What is it, they said. He took out his
> glasses and read
> with difficulty, La Ilaha Illallah, the first phrase
> of the Islamic
> kalimah. They said, that is it, doesn't it also say
> Mohammedur
> Rasoolullah. The Bhand looked up and said, how could
> that be written,
> it is from before the time of our Prophet.
> 
> It was said of them that wherever they performed,
> they always used to
> lampoon their host and patron. After Karela Bhand of
> Delhi, there was
> Sajjan, Qaim, Daim, Rajabi, Naushah, Bibi Qadar etc.
> Once, Qaim was
> making faces and went on for over three hours, the
> whole gathering sat
> there mesmerized."
> 
> 
> There is also another strain of Bhandgiri, popular
> in Kashmir. M K
> RAINA, the famous Hindi theatre director worked with
> the Kashmiri
> bhands briefly and describes them in the web article
> at
> http://radiokashmir.org/mkraina/bhand.html.
> 
> "The Bhand has to train himself to be a skillful
> actor, dancer,
> acrobat and musician. The leader of the troupe is
> called the magun, a
> word taken from maha guni, a man of varied talent.
> 
> The Maskharas are one of the most important
> characters in the Bhand
> Pather. They lampoon the king and the upper classes
> by exposing their
> corruption. The jester is the constant factor in the
> performance, the
> link of the various episodes. The elements of
> homour, be it hazal
> (mockery), mazaak (jokes), tasan (sarcasm) or even
> finding fault with
> the other characters is the forte of the maskhara.
> They do very
> accurate caricatures of society using a great deal
> of pantomime.
> Finally, the maskhara emerges as the rebel, the
> character who does not
> cow down to the oppressor."
> 
> So wherefrom this violence on a profession and on
> artists whose like
> is not to be found anywhere on the horizon? Why have
> we so
> systematically degraded and lampooned a performing
> class whose forte
> lay in lampooning everyone and everything? Why did
> we allow one of our
> most versatile, popular and explosive performing
> genres to sink so
> much into debasement that it can disgrace even the
> best of our actors
> and stars? While we search for the answers, we can
> start by imbuing
> the term with a little more respect. I take pride in
> announcing in
> these pages that I am nothing but a chhota mota
> bhaand. May God make
> me a great one.
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com