[Reader-list] On 'Khalq-e-Khuda'

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Kirdar,

Many thanks for your post. You are right, there are independent and 
autonomous usages of the word 'Khalq', especially as 'the people' that 
exist in Arabic, Persian and Urdu. So, for instance the Peoples 
Democratic Party of Afghanistan (the Communist Part of Afghanistan) had 
two factions - Parcham (Banner/Flag) and Khalq (The People). Such that 
it was possible to refer to PDPA(Parcham) and PDPA(Khalq), just as we 
say CPI, CPI(M) and CPI(M-L).

However, the fact remains that the word 'Khalq' as signifying 
'people/human beings' in any language is in a sense derivative from its 
specific meaning and etymological origin in Arabic as 'the creation of 
god' - because - human beings are the zenith, as far as 'the creation of 
God' is considered in Islamic thinking. And 'Khalq' is one of the two 
forms of creation in Arabic. I will elaborate on this a little later.

Having said that, I find it actually interesting that the word 'Khalq' 
has moved from the sacred to the profane/mundane register - as you 
correctly point out. It points to an inventive de-sacralization of the 
term, especially by later writers. Such that even an avowedly atheist 
poet like Faiz would use 'Khalq'or 'Khalq e Khuda' without a thought. Or 
that a Communist Party faction in Afghanistan would use the word to 
identify itself (again without any problems or crises of identity). This 
shows that words change meaning and register with time. It is a natural 
process that happens in all languages. And it is quite refreshing to 
free words and terms from the meaning with which they have been 
originally endowed, and bestow new significances to them. That is 
probably one of the basic tasks of literary creativity. And I am all for 
profane, even radically de-sacralized readings of all terms that may 
have originally had a more rigorously 'theological' gloss.

So, sometimes, in colloquial Hindustani, I have heard of a 'bribe' being 
referred to as 'Prasad'(a blasphemous usage no doubt, given 'prasad's' 
original meaning of being that which is left behind by the Gods for us 
to consume after they have been sated). But I quite like this (profane) 
usage, especially because I know that it somehow subverts the gravitas 
of the ritual usage.

I suspect that later Urdu/Arabic/Persian poets and readers feel a 
similar delight in de-sacralizing words like 'Khalq. Poets like Faiz do 
it on occasion, Ghalib does it often (he toys quite often with the 
blasphemous), even sometimes like Noon Meem Rashid, is particularly fond 
of 'de-sacralizing' the corpus of otherwise 'sacred words and concepts'.

In fact, in Arabic, there is a whole corpus or genre, known as 'mujun' 
(from which we get 'mauj') writing, which delights in the radical 
profanation (often with sexual connotations) of sacred terms. 
Interestingly, you find instances of 'mujun' tucked away in the 
interstices of very high minded philosophical and theological treatises 
(for the entertainment of the exhausted alim, or religious scholar). 
This just goes to show the immense distance that Islamicate cultures 
have travelled (unfortunately in the direction of constricted speech, in 
present times)

Be that as it may, when it comes to a detailed lexical analysis of a 
word, and thinking about why it is to be read in a singular or plural 
sense, or why it naturally moves to the feminine gender when found in 
gramatically gendered languages, then we have to try and do the lexical 
detective work of trying to find its original sense, in its original 
language. And I was merely trying to see why the term 'Khalq-e-Khuda' 
was glossed in the feminine case, as opposed, as you correctly point out 
, other words like 'Majma' or 'Hujoom' (which also denote 'gatherings' 
or collectivities) and which, unlike 'Khalq' tend towards the default 
masculine case in grammatically gendered languages.

I have no doubts about the fact that the original sense of the Arabic 
triple consonant cluster - 'khe-lam-qaf' (which gives us 'Khalq' and 
from which stem an entire family of words like 'Ikhlaq', 'Makhlooq', 
'Khalqat' all of which have different shades of contextual meaning- 
including 'ethics' for Ikhlaqiyat (the question of ethics is after all 
related to the predicament of being human, and the situation of being 
endowed with 'free will' which is a special marker of the zenith of 
God's creation - the 'Khalq', or human beings). Quranic Arabic has two 
terms for creation - one being 'Ibda' (creation ex nihilo - creation 
from nothing, the original creation of the universe) and the other being 
'Khalq' (creation from something, from an already created substance - 
which is the case with animate life). Which is why the term used for all 
living beings in their general collective sense is 'Khalqat'.

Can I give you references ? - Unfortunately right now I am typing this 
off the top of my head, sitting in a 'nowhere' between places. So I do 
not have them at hand. But any standard Arabic lexicon or grammar will 
give you a sense of the special nominative cases and the exceptional 
nouns that default into the feminine reading when they are expressed in 
the collective sense (as for instance 'Khalq' does). For detailed 
'theological' understandings of the word 'Khalq' a good place to start 
(and something that is accessible in India) is the work of Shah Wali 
Ullah (most of which is available in Urdu, being translated from the 
original Arabic and Persian).

As for the phrase 'Khalq Allah' that is easy, consult any list of 
attributes/names of the prophet Muhammad (called 'Asma-un-Nabi'), and 
you will come across the word 'Khayr-al-Khalq-Allah' (the greatest of 
God's creations), you even find 'Sa'ad-ul-Khalq' (the joy of creation) 
and so forth. I suspect that if you google the phrase Khalq Allah, you 
will come across a large number of sites that contain the 'asma un nabi' 
list. More specifically, as far as my memory goes, (I could be wrong in 
terms of detail here, as it has been a while since I looked this sort of 
thing up) there is a text called  'Tahdhib al-asma' (short form of a 
much longer title which translates roughly as 'the emendation/list of 
the Names and Attributes') by the 12th century Damascene scholar al 
Nawawi which is one of the earliest compilation of names, in which you 
are bound to find the phrase 'Khayr al Khalq Allah'.

Finally, a note on location, again. I take your point about the marking 
of location as an inflection on the power of address (pun intended). I 
did not think of 'Istanbul' as 'on high' compared to Delhi. I had 
invoked Istanbul, mainly in a somewhat hap-hazard attempt at addressing 
what Naeem and Gargi and others have been discussing as the 
'Indo-Centric' nature of our discussions. Usually, when I write on the 
list, I find myself in a modified barsaati in Old Rajendra Nagar (not 
even as glamorous as Punjabi Bagh, which at least has the ring road to 
give it gravitas and significance.)I have never thought that such a 
location had an impact on what I do or do not say, so, similarly, 
finding myself in Istanbul, I did not think that it had any import on 
the 'worth' of what I was saying. But thank you, in any case for making 
me think about the significance of the 'location' of the writer in 
geographical terms. It may yield something useful at some later date.

As for whether or not, these discussions waste time on the list. Of that 
I can never be sure. Reading the things that came up in the exchange 
between Yasir, Kshemendra, you and Ramaswamy, made me re-visit some of 
the things that I have been interested in for a long time. I do not 
think our 'interests' and curiosities have to be 'useful'. In fact the 
tyranny of 'utility' and 'function' is something I personally find very 
limiting, in ordinary discourse, it limits the adventures our thoughts 
can have. It is up to the reader, whether he or she wants to enter some 
of the obscure corners of these adventures. Nothing dictates that you, 
or anyone else, has to. You can always hit 'delete', or decide to keep 
and read later, to respond, or not to respond. I do all of the above.



Apologies for saying more than was probably necessary, again.

regards,

Shuddha

PS : Who is an Urdu-Wallah? Someone who Urdu belongs to (as in someone 
who lays a claim to Urdu) or as someone who belongs to Urdu (as in 
someone whom Urdu lays a claim to)? As with other vexed questions of 
belonging, I have never found a satisfactory claim to this question. My 
personal preference is inclined towards saying that an Urdu-Wallah is 
anyone who lays a claim (however appropriate or inappropriate, justified 
or unjustified) on Urdu. But, I am open to other understandings of this 
phrase.

best

S.