[Reader-list] Linda Hess: Turning inward, carrying scholarship lightly

[Chintan Girish Modi]

>From http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Bangalore/article1087304.ece

Linda's internal quest for Kabir By S. Bageshree

The seekers of Kabir come in stunning variety. There are singers, listeners,
scholars, social activists and ritual-bound mahants, occupying spaces that
are religious, spiritual, secular or even atheist. Quite often, they refuse
to be slotted into any single category at all, with one direction of pursuit
of the mystic poet leading them in unpredictable new directions.

The journey of renowned Kabir scholar and translator from Stanford
University, Linda Hess, too has taken her on several unchartered paths. What
began as a personal quest in the spiritual traditions of India in the
seventies has eventually taken her on a quest of Kabir, not as he is
revealed in scholarly written texts, but as he lives in our midst today, in
myriad musical and oral traditions.

Somewhere along the journey, Linda has erased the boundary within herself,
between the spiritual seeker of Kabir and the scholar. She occasionally
sings Kabir these days. On a visit to Bangalore last Saturday, Linda was
humming along with Shabnam Virmani, a fellow seeker and director Kabir
Project, at an informal singing session in the city. Poet, scholar and
translator, the late A.K. Ramanujan, was the “original inspiration” who made
her see that academic work is not necessarily all stiff and starchy, says
Linda. “He carried his scholarship lightly and made people see that there is
hope yet of not getting lost in scholarship!”

While in Bangalore, Linda is launching her ‘Singing Emptiness: Kumar
Gandharva Performs the Poetry of Kabir', published by Seagull, which
includes an elaborate introductory essay, bilingual texts of 30 songs, a CD
with selected songs by Kumar Gandharva and contributions by writers U.R.
Ananthamurthy and Ashok Vajpeyi.

*A book on Kabir*

This study is part of Linda's much larger project, a book that looks at
Kabir in all the complex dimensions, both spiritual and socio-political. The
latter aspect of Kabir, she says, has gained importance in the post-Babri
Masjid context, when Kabir for many became the “voice from the ground”
against sectarianism.

Linda wonders, though, why faith and activism are necessarily seen as
contradictory. “Those who are powerfully resisting the politics of hatred
almost never want to speak as Hindus,” she says.

This, Linda believes, leaves the space wide open for Hinduism to be
possessed by the politics of Hindutva. “Even in America, it is only in
recent times that we have had Jewish people speaking for the Palestinian
homeland cause as a people of Jewish faith,” she says.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Kabir's poetry for Linda is that it
gives space to think at once about inner awakening and the social and
political reality. The last chapter of the book she is working on looks at
both the iconoclast reformer Kabir who questioned hierarchies and
authoritarianism of all hues and the spiritual Kabir who leads you to a
journey within the self. She is looking at “how different constituencies
appropriate, negotiate and argue about these Kabirs.”

Linda is searching her own answers for a series of larger questions on faith
itself through her work with Kabir. As she puts it: “Can too much music, too
much beauty and bliss, wreck your revolutionary spirit? Does turning inward
make you forget the harsh realities of our world? What do music, spiritual
practice, and self-knowledge have to do with politics? What is at stake in
asking and answering these questions?”