[Reader-list] Essay on the Kashmiri poet :Ahad Zarger's vachun

[inder salim]

Dear Aranab

As promised in Delhi, I am forwarding some passages of an essay
written by Dr, M. Maroof Shah published in 'The Journal of Kashmir
Studies' ( university of Kashmir , Srinagar ). The essay is titled The
Crises of Western Humanism: A sufi response of Ahad Zargar.

 No doubt about the fact that sufi poetry is running in the veins of
average Kashmiri, but the celebration of this particular poet in
Kashmir tells us a different story about Kashmir and its approach to
love life and spirituality. Not only the song is available in the
market ( sung by noted singer Abdul Rashid Hafiz)  but every year '
sham-e-Zarger is still celebrated in the heart of srinagar by numersou
lovers of zargar sahib. My performance: From Lal Ded to Ahad Zargar at
LTG Gallery on 4th of Dec. was part celebration part introduction to
the poet outside Kashmir. I believe, any discussion on Ahad Zarger and
other sufi poets automatically deconstructs the ill-orchestrated
fundamentalist face of average Kashmiri.

( the original poem in Kashmiri is published as well )

Abastract: The present paper attempts a critical appraisal of Secular
Western Humansim from a Sufiistic perspective. While highlighting the
divergence between Sufisim and Secular anthropocentric humanism it
argues how the Sufi image of man as presented in one of the Vachuns (
song) Zargar appropriates and moves beyond humanistic conceptions of
human dignity and gives it a metaphysical foundation.

Introduction:

Secular humanism of the Modern West arose as a protest against
medieval metaphysics and scholasticism, a revolt against
theocentricism of the traditional man. The Greeks are its progenitors.
Believing in the dignity of the individual, unlimited progress of
mankind, making this earth a heaven and earthly perfectionism it has
however failed to deliver. Serving all ties with the transcendence and
focusing its gaze on the earth and man's earthly vacation and destiny
it idolized reason and science. However it was Nietzsche who sensed
fissures in this philosophy and with the advent of structuralism and
post structuralism and postmodernism humanism has ben challenged. The
metanarrative of humanism has been indeed discredited  as secular
scientific metanarrative has got problematized. Absurdist nihilist
relativist skeptical mood of modern and post modern literature is an
evidence of the failure of the humanstic ideology. The question is
whether there is still any hope for man, any way to affirm his
dignity, any means to make man realize the perfection  that early
humanistic had dreamed of ?  Is there any consolation for man? Sufisim
answers in the affirmative and for this it rejects fundamental
metaphysical assumptions of humanism in all its varieties such as
Huxley's theological humanism or scientific humanism and Marxist
humanism. Here we attempt to trace Sufi appropriation of humansitics
ideal in one of the vachuns ( song ) of Ahad Zargar, a twentieth
century Sufi Poet of Kashmir. Sufisim while rejecting secular
anthropocentric scientific humanism of the West affirms the dignity of
man, integrates him with the universe, gives him meaning and purpose,
grounds values of truth, beauty and goodness and dispels skeptical
challenge through mystical and metaphysical realization in gnosis.
Characteristics of Western Humansim:

Sufism and Humanism :

All that is really positive in humanism is appropriated by Mysticism.
If humanist wants to be no less than God, to safeguard human dignity,
unity and freedom and expand his frontiers of knowledge to the level
of omniscience, to be the pole of existence, to appropriate everything
in the heavens and the earth ( macrocosmos ) in micorcosmos, to
conquer space and time, to know the unlimate truth, the Origin and the
End, to soar high and " scan" God to be in the heaven of his own
making, to celebrate beauty and goodness , then Sufi like Ahad Zargar
is the model worth emulating. Western humanism, despite its grand
claims miserably to deliver it promises and ends in absurdism  and
pessimism and culminates in the death of man. Modern and post modern
man has reached the blind end of the road of negation and does not
know how to affirm. He knows on la as Iqbal puts it.

Zargar and Sufi Humanism
Zargar in the above quoted verses asserts that Man ( as far as he
appropriates/ is appropriated  by the Spirit that is not his but is in
him ) is the Alpha and the Omega,  the First and the Last, the
Omnipotent and the only existent. He is the most precious treasure,
the revealer of the hidden treasure that is God,. Knowing the sipar of
the self one knows, rather experiences God, the Absolute. And this
necessitates transcendence of what Kierkegaard calls the ethical stage
of man. Through negation he affirms as the Islamic Shahadah demands.
He transcends man to  become superman ( not the super of Nietzsche
although he reembles him in certain respects ) or tires to approximate
the perfect man who is beyond good and evil as he becomes the very
goodness. He is in a state whether where neither haram nor halal
entereth.  The humanist is unable to transcend merely human state and
thus he is denied perfection of the divine. He is unable to transcend
the state of Abduhu. He can not be granted miraj, and he can not see
what maqam-i-mahmood is. The Sufi sees no duality. His eyes become
God's eye and his hands become the Beloved's hands. He has obliterated
his ego so that God could be reflected in him. He is no more merely
human as he has crossed the dark night of the soul and as he is as
perfect as his father in  heaven.  He can not be characterized as this
or that as his path is pathless and his track trackless in that
transcendence of wara-ul-wara. He is no more a wave in the oceans as
he is gone in fana and achieved the baqa by partaking of the ocean, by
becoming the ocean. That is why he could say that he has fashioned
Adam and breathed life into him.


The mystic is not a moral man in the usual legalist sense of the term.
In that metaethical transcendence, transcendence of the what Guenon
calls moralism, which is prerogative law even through not being
abolished is transcended nonetheless. Law is made for man and not vice
versa and Jesus would say. The sufi discovers law within himself. He
does not see it as an imposition from without.  The believer's heart
is thr real authority, the real judge of halal and haram. Real mufti
is within. That is why the Sufi lives outside the realm of ethics but
in the plane of morality. The Sufi is the supremely moral mean as he
has not lustful self, no separative ego to choose good or bad. He has
so totally surrendered that God's will becomes his will. He is beyond
Good and Evil, in a state where the very question of haram and hala
doesn't exist. The Sufi by scenting unity has passed beyond the
duality of sugar and poison as Rumi say. Man becomes the light , a law
unto himself. He is his own imam as Love is his imamand that makes him
bandaay  azad to use Iqbalian phrase.  Love is God for the Sufi and
love is above law. Qyam and sujud and bayhazoor unless Ishq is the
imam as Iqbal reminds us.  The sufi renounces everthing--- all
clinging and all attachments and desires so he can dispense with
awalad  ( son ) Love transforms all relationships and life becomes
blissful, orgasmic.  Love kills death and thus life and death become
mingled.  This is what Zargar perhaps means by  zindi kari mordus
saeth souhbat. The universe is Self's manifestation. There is nothing
outside the self. Love is not timeless for him. His love is sham love.
The other is hell for him. There is no other for Sufi, as there is no
I and Thou in the river of Wahdat. When one loves the self by
experiencing love all sorrow disappears.  Thre is no more the dominion
of evil and suffering. Everything becomes divine. The earth becomes
heaven. The ego cant exist  when there is love. So the humanist is not
willing to relinquish the eo or self. So he can not be clothed by the
divine self or love. That is why love has disappeared from the modern
world.  There is no Boddhisatva in sight.  That is moder humanist
literature mourns the death of God and of Love.  There is no bliss in
things finite as one of the Upanisadic rishis says. The Quran also
says Ala hi zikrillahi tatmainal qualoob.  That is why modern
literature is plagues by pessimism and absurdism. Kashmiri literature
especially the mystical literature knows nothing of alienation, exile
and consequent pessimism. The pir-i-waer/rishiwaer ( valley of saints
) in Kashmir knows nothing of it. Mystical sensibilities can not
coexist with despair and alienation of any kind. Humansim takes
alienation for granted and can not do anything about it as God who is
the principe of dealienation is not living or felt reality for it.
Despair is Kufu as the Quran says. The sufi celebrates love and
beauty. As he sees nothing by God everywhere he is always blissful as
God is Ananda, Bliss. Western Humanism has created  wastelands and
desertes because it has deprived man of God who is chasmati Haywaan.


Zargar minces no words in condemining faqehai kur zouq, zahid and
mullah. Misli dushman zahid fasi din. Religion is song, celebration,
ecstasy, love, beauty, Exoterism is precisely the opposite. So a sufi
can not be  but scared of it. That is why he takes allegory, symbolism
and poetry.

There is no humanist writer in Kashmir at least until the twentieth
century because traditional Kashmiri writer is steeped in mystical and
religious lore. To call Lall or Sheikh-ul-allam a humanist is totally
unwarranted given the past history of the humanism, especially its use
by philosophers and historians. Humansim even if it believes in God is
not acceptable in the religious context of sufism.

Conclusion

>From the analysis of Ahad Zargar's vachun we see that Sufism by
transcending the finitude and limitation of the empirical self and
individual through fana attains subsistence ( baqa) in God, the round
of triple values of goodness, truth and beauty. Man is affirmed and
his divinity and perfection ensured. The empirical self dies so that
man realizes the immortal self that is characterized as Existence,
Consciousness and Bliss.  By appropriatieng the divine akhlaq or
attributes the Sufi makes man a Godman, the perfect man, the heir of
the kingdomof God. He sings the song of life, larger life as his
consciousness transcends the fetters of space and time. He becomes the
bird of lamakan.


The poem:


Vanquish the void, soul's text reads,
in infidelity I find the affirmation of being.
The enlightened  knows the meaning of codes.

While you live, conjugate with the male,
let him have the bliss of  passion;
male and female are but a gamble of union.
in infidelity I find the affirmation of being.

The one you have your spouse by contract,
cherish mouthfuls of  her bosom' milk;
do not get fuddled up by others' gossip.
in infidelity I find the affirmation of being.

Discern the sign and slay you father,
and marry the one you gave you birth;
exile you brother to some alien land.
in infidelity I find the affirmation of being.

Boldly dismember your child's body,
throw the piece into the gushing spate;
if you dare, then savour the flesh.
in infidelity I find the affirmation of being.

Declare the profane sacred by one word,
and bow in prayer where there is no Qibla;
follow the infidel as you Imam.
in infidelity I find the affirmation of being.

Hang the abstinent treat him as your foe,
and slaughter all those who profess faith,
first you burn down the prayer house.
in infidelity I find the affirmation of being.

I gave life to the clay model
And named it human being
I gave birth to Prophet and his words
Almighty itself shone because of me.

I alone am the centre, I am the circle,
I alone am permeating all form of being;
all forms do  emanate from my own-most being.
in infidelity I find the affirmation of being.

Be one special and escape the concierge,
multitudes are beguiled by undesired thought;
dare to stone the angels of heavens.
in infidelity I find the affirmation of being.

I unravel the secret to the discerning ones,
the mindless hone their steel arrows;
Ahad Zargar thus composed this venomous song.
in infidelity I find the affirmation of being.


with love
is

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