By Mohammad Vazeeruddin
What is the relevance of mystic poet Baba Farid to present-day India, other than, of course, that, though a Muslim mystic, he is revered more by Sikhs? How can his mystic vision conduce to national integration?
The spirit of this age, with its morbid introspection, its skepticism, and crude, hard clinging only to that which can be seen, felt and handled by our restricted conception of truth, renders it difficult to appreciate, not to say relate to, the mystic vision of human brotherhood sought to be propagated by Baba Farid and such other Sufis. Until we all have a renaissance of faith, and the humility of mind that is its corollary, we are not likely to prove true to the vision.
All the same, it will have to be conceded that the human condition in India today would have been a lot worse if we had not had the guidance of such lightships, as Baba Farid, on the high seas of life.
After all, what is it that keeps our chins up and eyes to the front through the desperation of so much that is unspeakable and incomprehensible? It is best described as The Song, the inheritance from God which no inheritance from man can overcome. It is what Tennyson called The Gleam, and Baba Farid called Love. It is poets who understand this light which never fails, this deathless song, better perhaps than most men. Poets are primitives in the sense that they are prophets more closely related to God in a certain fashion than others. They cling to the unequivocal beauty and wholesomeness of human love which is changeless in change.
Baba Farid was one such poet who had what Einstein called the “Cosmic religious sense”. Essentially, our primal inheritance has no limitations, but we have mortgaged that inheritance to the point of crippling it almost beyond recovery. Yet there is an undying echo of The Song, the reassurance of The Gleam. No mortal winter has quite sapped the life of the eternal Tree. Mystic poetry still offers to a confused and troubled India the panacea of love and beauty, to heal the wounds of struggle and conflict. It is no idle bequest; it works, given even half a fair and honest trial.
No catastrophe of the ages has succeeded in eliminating the unnamed and inexplicable power that operates through the universe and through man; and whether we consider God as the First Cause, the Actuating Principle or as that Personality made in man’s image, it is all one and the same. We are the inevitable inheritors, and we cannot, if we would, barter our birthright for any mess of pottage.
There perhaps comes to every man a secret moment when he feels that we have made this barter, when the elaborate architecture of our life crashes like a small child’s house of blocks. But, insistently through the uproar of every cataclysm, there threads a golden sound from which there is no escape. It is the involuntary consciousness of the Voice that spoke universes into the vast emptiness.
Very simply, mystic poets have uttered these tremendous truths. Baba Farid has it: “If you are blessed with acute wisdom, O Farid, do not write an account of the evil deeds of others. Bending your head to your own heart, better look into what your own deeds are”. (Dr. Harnam Singh Shan’s translation)
Isn’t it something to have expressed the whole code of human conduct in these short lines? Yet, how many Indians are willing to heed the sage advice? The answer is obvious. Nevertheless, it is The Song that most men may hear, though without recognition. It is to the magnificent minority that the singing comes clear, for mystic poets listen with another ear and remember what other men have forgotten, even as they prophecy what other men may not believe.
Yet our inheritance is real unless we disbelieve the following injunction by Baba Farid: “Do not utter even a single rude word to anyone as the True Master abides in one and all; do not break the heart of anyone as every heart is a priceless jewel.”
A poet, more so if he happens also to be a sage, does not belong to one people or one nation; he belongs to humanity, to the world, as Baba Farid does. We owe to such poets the fact that we have preserved our national soul, kept alive the hope and faith in the destiny of our country. Mystic poetry gives prototypes that we ought to be living up to today but are not, men on whom we should try to base ourselves but do not.
The mystic poet is the highest type of mankind on earth, said Anna Kingsford, the seeress. He is the forerunner, so to speak, in each age of the coming age, his heart beating in tune with the pulse of Creation. He has no self apart from his larger self, and while other men pass indifferent through life and the world, the personality of the poet is divine and, so supreme and ubiquitous in consciousness.
He feels more intensely than others do, and when he sings the voice of all Creation is heard and the great continual cadence of universal life moves and becomes articulate in human language. Mystic poetry, such as that of Baba Farid, is a refining and humanizing influence. Through all ages there has been the poet-seer who has sung of that great humanity, the unity of all creation.
Therefore, though the storm lours, the wind howls and waters dash wildly against the rocks in India today, peace will not be far away if only we can hear and heed the song of human love.
For the uninitiated, a word about the life and times of Baba Farid.
Some trace Baba FarÄ«d’s ancestors back to al-Husayn while others trace his lineage to the second Caliph Umar ibn Khattab. He was born in 1173 or 1188 CE (584 Hijri) at Kothewal village, 10 km from Multan in the Punjab region of Pakistan, to JamÄl-ud-dÄ«n SuleimÄn and Maryam BÄ«bÄ« (Qarsum BÄ«bÄ«), daughter of Sheikh WajÄ«h-ud-dÄ«n KhojendÄ«. He was a descendant of the FarrÅ«khzÄd, known as JamÄl-ud-Dawlah, a Persian (Tajik) king of eastern Khorasan. His grand father, Shaykh Shu’aib, who was the grandson of Farrukh Shah Kabuli, the king of Kabul and Ghazna, left Afghanistan and settled in the Punjab in 1125, when Farrukh ShÄh KÄbulÄ« was killed by the Mongol hordes invading Kabul.
Baba Farid traveled to Khurasan, Kirman, Badakhshan, Baghdad, Mecca Muazzma, Madina Munawara, Kufa, Basra, Damascus, Nishapur, Bukhara, Dehli and Multan before he finally settled in Pakpattan (meaning pure ferry). Here he spent his life in spreading the light of divine Islam. The saint died in 1265 and his shrine was constructed by Khwaja Nizamuddin Auleya in 1267.
According to a local lore, Mughal King Akbar on the eve of his visit to the shrine to pay homage to the saint declared Pakpattan as an official name of the town. The thought that so many people including Ibn-e-Batuta, Guru Nanik Dev and Waris Shah had visited the shrine evokes awe and aura of eternity.
