Naseem Akhtar Hines received her PhD in Asian languages and Literature from the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle. Her dissertation focus was Bhakti Literature. She received her undergraduate degree in English Literature from UW Seattle and from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India. She has taught at the UW, at Washington University in St Louis, where she established a Hindi program. She has also taught Hindi at University of California in Berkeley and is currently a Preceptor of Urdu-Hindi at Harvard University. Dr.Hines has presented at major national and international academic conferences. Her scholarly articles, fiction and poetry have been published in several anthologies.    Her current interests include the devotional literatures of North India, especially the Indo-Sufi texts, the Urdu ghazal and qawwali, and North Indian classical music. Her latest book 'Maulana Daud's Chandayan' is shortly forthcoming.

Love and symbolism in Indo-Sufi poetry and music by Dr. Naseem Akhtar Hines

Indian culture presents, perhaps the finest examples of the coming together and assimilation of many different traditions, cultures and civilizations. Over the centuries, foreign influences have merged with indigenous traditions and resulted in cultural expressions that have a unique and distinct identity, quite different from the original components. The confluence of cultures is most delicate, intoxicating, and spiritually uplifting in the fields of poetry and music. For example, the Sufis brought the ghazal and the masnavi--poetic genres centered on the expression of love--from Persia to India. The ghazal, having picked up several native themes, metaphors and imagery, has come to be hugely popular as a literary and musical genre in the Indian subcontinent. And the qawwali accommodates a variety of literary genres (ghazal, masnavi, rubai) and is quite the paragon of textual and cultural cross-pollination.

Much has been written about Islamic mysticism. Coleman Barks' recent English translation of Maulana Rumi's poems has provided a window into the rich world of mystic and Sufi poetry in Persian literature. Rumi lived and composed verse in the 13^th century. But even today, Rumi’s poetry is widely recognized as the clearest mirror reflecting the fervor and intensity of a lover’s heart:

The Sufi sentiment of drawing metaphoric parallels between secular (earthly) love and divine love, are reflected in these verses written centuries later by Abdul Rahim, a 16^th century poet and one of the "nine gems" (navaratnas) of Mughal emperor Akbar's court:

The Masnavi

To experience the beginning of cultural exchanges between the Persian/Turkic traditions and the indigenous practices in India, please allow me to take you back, away from the 21^st century and the headline news, to early 14^th century Delhi. Here, in the great tradition of the 'Masnavi' of Rumi, another great scholar, Amir Khusrau, the eminent statesman and favorite disciple of the most famous Indian Sufi saint, Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia, was also composing masnavis. The inspiration came from the great love stories of Shirin and Farhad, and Laila and Qais, comparable to Romeo and Juliet. Qais is popularly known as Majnoon, the crazy. The works of Amir Khusrau are still the best examples of masnavis written in India in the Persian language.

The masnavi as a poetic genre continued to flourish in India for many centuries. Soon after arriving in India, it began to assimilate the local literary and thematic features and began to change. The new masnavi was composed in the Awadhi language. It adopted features from the indigenous prosody, and looked to the local love-lore for inspiration. In the annals of literature composed in the New Indo-Aryan languages, "Padmavat," composed by Malik Muhammad Jayasi in 1540, is considered to be the best example of the Indo-Sufi masnavi genre.

The thematic features of a masnavi can be interpreted on secular as well as spiritual levels. On the surface, a masnavi can be the story of a hero who is attracted to the heroine and leaves his wife and home in her quest. When the hero is united with the beloved, he comes back home with her! In the beginning, there is a struggle between the two women, but soon things settle down. The story has all the makings of a scandalous tale. However, on the spiritual level, the beloved in the narrative is the symbol of divine love, and the wife of the hero represents the secular aspect of his life. The hero represents the human soul who burns in the fire of true love for the Divine Beloved. The hero's journey is really a mystic's journey to find the Beloved. He seeks nothing but union with his Beloved. What should he do to find the path that leads to the Divine Beloved? The answer is, find a spiritual preceptor, the "guru," who has already made the mystical journey.

The significance of  the concept of a "guru" in a seeker's life cannot be overstated. Sometimes, even in real life, the veneration of the disciple for his spiritual master is so deep, and the connection so strong, that the disciple can not survive separation from his teacher. For example, when Amir Khusrau received the news of his spiritual master Nizamuddin Aulia’s departure from this world, he was on a military campaign. As he turned around to go back to Delhi, he composed his famous poem:

Unable to continue life after his master had left this world, Amir Khusrau passed away just one year after the demise of his teacher.

Due to its focus on spirituality, a lofty and austere subject, the recitation of a masnavi is essentially narrative in nature. This simply means that the masnavi stanzas are recited in a very simple manner and the text, unlike a lyrical composition, is not expressed in lengthy and complicated melodic phrases. Nevertheless, qawwalis and ghazals do borrow from masnavis and other texts that are spiritual in nature. It is not uncommon to find a few lines from one of Maulana Rumi’s works, or a doha or chaupai at the beginning of a qawwali or ghazal performance, followed by the main text in Urdu or Punjabi.

The Ghazal

Like the masnavi, the ghazal also made a voyage from Persia and was warmly received in India. Like the Persian ghazal, the Urdu ghazal is also eminently suited to celebrate love, in union, as well as in separation. In the last few decades, the Urdu ghazal has experienced a major revival in India. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in modern urban India, familiarity with the Urdu ghazal has become synonymous with being educated and cultured. This is true not only in modern India and Pakistan but also in Indo-Pakistani communities around the world.

In India, ghazals are now being composed in languages other than Urdu, such as Gujarati, Punjabi, and Marathi. A number of Hindi movies, marketed around the world, especially to the Middle-East (with sub-titles in English, French, Arabic, and Persian languages) owe their success and popularity to the film’s ghazals and qawwalis. The Bollywood music industry has played a very significant role in keeping the Ghazal and the Qawwali genres alive, and on top of the charts.

On the origin of the ghazal as a poetic genre, E.G. Brown in his ‘A Literary History of Persia’ writes-- "The ghazal was developed and shaped to their own sensibilities by the Persians who separated it from the ‘Naseeb’ section of the Arabic ‘Qasidah’ the aristocratic form of poetry, chiefly associated with courtly life. The word ghazal means speaking to women and the form has essentially erotic overtones." However, Ralph Russell in his 'The Pursuit of Urdu Literature' observes: “...the ghazal is also the poetry of another kind of love-- the passionate love of the mystic for God, his Divine Beloved. The poets called one kind of love 'ishq-e-majazi‘(symbolic or secular) and the other 'haqiqi' (real). Symbolic love is earthly in nature. Spiritual love takes on a sense of the metaphysical. Sometimes, it is difficult for readers in the West to see that the beloved who personifies Divine Love, also simultaneously represents the earthly beloved. Equally difficult it is for today's audiences to comprehend a man's love and total commitment to a woman who is devastatingly beautiful but impossibly haughty. Over the last few decades, the image of the ‘beloved’ has emerged in our minds as a person who is beautiful in body and soul. But one only has to think about Beatrice in Dante’s Divine Comedy, in which she, as the beloved, is both his earthly love and a symbol of Christ. (p. 36 Russell).

Going back to the Urdu love lyrics of the Ghazal, in his ‘A History of Urdu Literature,' Muhammad Sadiq writes, that the feature that distinguishes the Urdu ghazal from poetry all over the world is its fragmentariness. This merely means that it is not essential that all the 'sher's (couplets) of the ghazal be focused on a single subject. In other words, ‘unity of theme’ is not an essential feature of the Urdu ghazal. Considering that Urdu poetry essentially embraces the features of the Persian ghazal tradition, where the language is not gender specific, Urdu poetry has also come to be ambivalent about the gender of the lover or the beloved.

Like the symbolism in the masnavi, much has been written on the symbolism in Urdu ghazal poetry as well. Much of the symbolic representation is inspired from the Persian poetic tradition. For example, in both the Persian and the Urdu ghazal traditions, the mirror is the symbol of human heart, and the cleaner and more polished the mirror, the better it can 'receive the reflection' of the Divine Soul. Other common images: the lips of the beloved are like the rubies of Badakhshan, or like rose-petals; her gazelle eyes are cups full of wine; to the passionate lover, the beloved’s arched eyebrows and raven black eyes, appear like the arch of a mosque framing the Kaba, commanding worship etc. 

The heart of the lover, often the poet himself, is eternally loyal to the beloved. Unfortunately, he is often misunderstood by the beloved. Thus, the true lover is essentially a wronged person. In fact, the beloved prefers the company of his rival, who of course is, not sincere in his designs for the beloved. In comparison, the heart of the lover is delicate and transparent like a crystal goblet. It is broken again and again by the neglectful behavior of the beloved. Most importantly, standing steadfastly through it all, the true lover never falters in his loyalty and total commitment to the beloved, even when he realizes the hopelessness and futility of his own situation.

The ghazal is articulated in a social gathering known as the mushaira. A mushaira is generally a formal get-together where a poet may share his ghazal with other poets and members of the audience who are familiar with the rules of decorum of such a gathering. Mushairas are sponsored by a patron or a very small number of patrons. One could attend it by invitation only. Unlike the qawwali presentation which is invariably a group performance, the 'ghazal-goi' or recitation of the ghazal is a one-person affair. Starting with the junior-most poet, and moving on to the senior-most poet, the presentation of the ghazal is essentially a performance of one person sharing his feelings and emotions with a select audience. There are two styles of ghazal recitation--‘tahat-ul-lafz’ (recitation without melody) and ‘baa- tarannum’ (with melody). In the course of the mushaira, a lighted candle ('shama'), is placed directly in front of the reciting poet. Once the poet has completed his recitation, the candle is moved in front of the poet next in line. Traditionally, mushairas were held after dinner on partially open terraces. To fully appreciate the romantic ambience of such a gathering, one might imagine the moon in a star-studded sky, where the reciting poet is the moon because his face is lit by the candle placed before him. He is surrounded by other littérateurs sitting in the shadows, enjoying and evaluating his poetry from the comfort of their seats. Even in the friendly skies, the moon is in the spotlight, the merit of his brilliance is in question, and there is no place to hide.

The Qawwali

The word Qawwali means "words" worthy of remembrance. It is equivalent to the Hindi shabad. The musical articulation of these verses often opens with a composition in praise of God, the next part is often a few couplets in praise of the Prophet, and Ali, and more couplets may mention the names of those Sufi saints or spiritual preceptors who are important to the family of the Qawwali presenters. After these formalities, the text of the poem moves on to couplets which can often be interpreted on the secular and spiritual levels, depending on the lyrics of the qawwali. However, unlike the ghazal, the qawwali text does not have to come from a single poet’s composition. It may incorporate parts of many ghazals or geets. The couplets that come in between the stanza parts of the main composition can be taken from any number of different sources, and even languages. For example, a Qawwali performance may begin with a few lines of Persian poetry, the main text could be in the Urdu language, and in the middle, a couplet attributed to Sant Kabir in Brajbhaasha, or a couplet in the Awadhi dialect may be hemmed in, followed by the main composition.

To appreciate this feature in qawwali and the feature of disconnectedness in the ghazal, one may imagine a master craftsman arranging different gems for an ornament. Each gem is selected and set in a design, not only for its own brilliance and value, but more importantly, to compliment the surrounding jewels to the best of their mutual advantage. In terms of poetics, the composition and meter of the qawwali text is not as strict as the inflexible rules of prosody that govern the ghazal composition. In terms of the subject matter, in recent times of political upheaval, both the ghazal and the qawwali have been used as vehicles to convey socio-political ideas, cleverly cloaked in poetry.

In the classical context, the performance spaces for both were male dominated. Having said this, perhaps it was not impossible for women of 'noble families' to be able to listen to a mushaira or a qawwali performance from within the privacy of a pre-arranged space. However, respectable women were not supposed to participate in practices such as ‘misraa uthanaa’ (repeating the first line of a couplet to encourage and recognize a poet) nor were women’s voices ever heard in appreciative exclamations such as aafareen, wah-wah, bohot khoob, kyaa baat hai etc.

In the fifties, Shakila Bano Bhopali became one of the first female qawwali singers to make a name. Known for her delightful gestures and adaa (style) on stage, she took the genre of qawwali singing to new heights — winning countless fans in India and abroad. Noted broadcaster Ameen Sayani, who interviewed her twice, recalls: ‘‘She had an absolute fabulous gift of repartee (what they call hazir jawabi in Urdu). She could engage the audience in delightful, impromptu conversation and keep them regaled for hours.’’ In the qawwali performances celebrating the Urs at the tombs of the Sufi saints, the sawal-jawab (question and answer) feature of Yousuf Azad Qawwal and Shakeela Bano Bhopali were crowd pullers, and their performances were greatly looked forward to and enjoyed. Preparations to celebrate the Urs began months in advance at the shrine of the local Sufi saint. It was a matter of great pride for the people of the town to invite the best qawwals to celebrate the occasion. People came from the neighboring villages three or four days ahead of time to shop in the mela (village fair) and attend the qawwali event. Once the more serious and formal qawwalis were over, it was the turn of 'lighter' qawwalis. Yousuf Azad extolled the superiority of the undying commitment and eternal love of the wronged hero, and Shakeela represented the incredibly beautiful beloved who is fed up with the lover’s insincere overtures. People actually memorized parts of these compositions at the performance only from listening. The refrain of the qawwali that is repeated over and over again helps with this memorization.

The morning following the Urs, those who were lucky to attend the event were prevailed upon by their family and friends to give a full account of the proceedings. In fact, I have actually witnessed such an event. A doctor friend of mine was in town to purchase medicines for the village hospital. He happened to be there at the Urs time so he attended the event. When he returned to his post in the village hospital, he was compelled by his young colleagues to act out the two competing qawwal groups. My friend obliged, narrating the event with appropriate embellishments, repeating the memorized verses over and over again.

One should not overlook the fact that listening to the recounting of such events was the only way most upper class women could enjoy the qawwali that took place at the Urs in their very own town! Fortunately, today, women can be in the audience at a qawwali performance, and can officially participate in a mushaira. I have knowledge of a number of events in India, Pakistan, the U.S.A, and other parts of the world where the diaspora from the subcontinent thrives; men and women are equal participants in these events. Hindi films have carried the performance etiquette of ghazal and qawwali to all corners of the world. All in all, the fruit of cultural cross-fertilization in India over the ages is increasingly available to the world at large to enjoy.