While rituals are an integral part of every religion, they cannot become a substitute for the true spirit of faith. So also with the rituals associated with Muharram. While they provide a powerful vehicle to relive the tragic events associated with the Battle of Karbala and the sufferings endured by Husain and his family, passive mourning alone is not enough. Muharram must not be seen merely as a time of cathartic mourning; to understand its true significance is to appreciate, year after year, the sacrifice and struggle against injustice that lay at the core of Husain’s martyrdom.
4
BY THE NIGHT WHEN IT
DRAWS A VEIL
NIGHTS HAVE A SPECIAL PLACE in Islam. The Quran repeatedly decrees the Believer to set aside some time for prayer in the dark watches of the night and the Prophet established the practice of tahajjud, or getting up from sleep to pray in the night. However, some nights are more special than others. For the faithful, there comes one night in the year that is a night of prayer and repentance like none other; it is a night of asking forgiveness and seeking barakaat or blessings. For the fifteenth night of the month of Shabaan according to the Muslim lunar calendar is Shab-e-Baraat, or the Night of Forgiveness. While during the day, halwa is prepared and distributed among friends and neighbours, the night is devoted to prayer. Attempting to fully capture its importance for my (then) teenaged daughters, my mother once described it thus: ‘Imagine it as the budget session of your personal parliament: when your budget is prepared, the previous year’s accounts are totaled up and what lies ahead is allocated to you.’
And, indeed, Shab-e-Baraat, also known as Lailat-ul-Baraat or Lailat-ul Dua, is the Night of Records, when our past catches up with us and our future can be corrected by only repentance and prayer. The night spent in prayer and asking for forgiveness, is followed by a day of fasting. Graveyards wear a festive look, with candles lit and flower petals scattered on many graves, and more visitors than even on Eid flock to offer fateha at the graves of their loved ones though such a practice is questioned by many as bida’at or innovation. However, even those who would scoff at the mingling of rituals with religion cannot undermine the historic significance of this day during the eighth month of the Islamic lunar calendar.
The Islamic calendar which began in the year 622 AD, the year of the Prophet Muhammad’s hijrat or migration from Mecca to Medina, marks the daily rhythms of the lives of countless Muslims as they simultaneously straddle two worlds – in many cases, the ‘outer’ one governed by the Gregorian calendar and their often hidden, ‘inner’ world where days and occasions are ticked off against the Hijri calendar. And, the Hijri calendar is not just a sentimental system of time reckoning and dating important religious events, such as siyaam (fasting) and Haj (pilgrimage to Mecca). It has a much deeper religious and historical significance. According to the scholar Abul Hassan al-Nadvi:
… the Islamic Era did not start with the victories of Islamic wars, nor with the birth or death of the prophet (PBUH), nor with the Revelation itself. It starts with Hijra, or the sacrifice for the cause of Truth and for the preservation of the Revelation. It was a divinely inspired selection. God wanted to teach man that struggle between Truth and Evil is eternal. The Islamic year reminds Muslims every year not of the pomp and glory of Islam but of its sacrifice and prepares them to do the same.
For the historians of Islam there are the numerous battles fought in the early years, the birth of members of the Prophet’s family, the deaths of the sahabi or the Prophet’s companions, as also the matrimonial alliances forged, the oaths of allegiance taken, and the declaration of truce among warring tribes. Certain irrevocable decisions pertaining to Islamic ritual and practice can also be affixed – such as the decision to adopt the qibla or direction towards the Kaaba was taken on the fifteenth of Shabaan two years after Hijrat. On the twenty-fith of Shabaan in the same year, fasting during the month of Ramzan was made compulsory.
So, apart from Shab-e-Baraat, special prayers are offered on four other nights that also hold a special importance for Muslims; these are: Lailat-ul-Miraj (Night of Ascent, on twenty-seventh Rajab); Lailat-ul-Qadr (Night of Decree that can fall on any of the last seven odd nights of Ramzan); Lailat-ul-Id-ul-Fitr (Night of Eid–ul-Fitr on first Shawwal); and Lailat-ul-Id-ul-Adha (Night of Eid-ul-Adha on tenth Dhu al-Hijja). I have described the nights preceded by the two Eids elsewhere in this volume; let me try and capture the magic of Lailat-ul-Qadr here. And the willing suspension of disbelief that lies at the heart of the story behind Lailat-ul-Miraj.
The Prophet’s night journey — which was both a physical and spiritual journey – took place on a single night sometime in the year 621.
Coming to Lailat-ul-Qadr, while the entire period of Ramzan is a time of fasting and praying (ibadat), there is one night that is especially special for Muslims. For, it is believed that there was one particular night when Allah had revealed the first verses of the Quran to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. Muhammad was at the time forty years old and unlettered. This most blessed of all nights falls on a night that no one can pinpoint with any certainty. Yet the faithful, who have prayed through the dark watches of the night seeking communion with Allah, say that the heart always knows when communion has been reached. Shab-e-Qadr or Lailat-ul-Qadr, understood variously to mean the Night of Honour and Dignity, the Night of Destiny or the Night of Power and Majesty, can fall on any of the odd nights in the last ten days of the month of Ramzan, i.e. on the twenty-first, twenty-third, twenty-fifth or twenty-seventh of Ramzan. Since no one knows which of these four nights is the night, one prays and meditates on all of these alternate nights, a bit like shooting in the dark and hoping to hit the target!
Unlike other anniversaries, Shab-e-Qadr is a solemn occasion – a time to reflect and pray, to celebrate the arrival of the Message from Allah, not through a feast for the senses but through abstinence and worship. Some go into retreat (i’tikaf), spending all their time in a mosque for the last ten days of Ramzan; others take as much time out as possible on these special nights for prayer and the study of the Quran. For this special night, the Quran tells its readers: ‘The Night of majesty is better than a thousand months.’ (Chapter 97, Al-Qadr)
Dinner is usually early all through Ramzan, and during Shab-e-Qadr especially so as the faithful want to be well prepared for a long night of prayer. An elaborate late dinner tends to sit heavily in the stomach, so during these few days of Ramzan people tend to go easy on the feasting that follows the fasting on other days. The idea is to have a light meal and stay up as late as one can. Some don’t sleep at all, preferring to offer late-night prayers, reciting verses from the Panj Surah, reading from the Quran and Hadith until it is time to eat sehri and offer the pre-dawn fajir prayers. By then the night has slipped away and a new day is ready to dawn.
It is said that on this night one should ask and ask for Allah’s bounties to one’s heart’s content, but above all one should ask for forgiveness of all past sins. The Prophet’s wife, Aisha, is said to have asked him: ‘O Messenger of Allah! If I knew which night is Lailat-ul-Qadr, what should I say during it?’ The Prophet instructed her to say, ‘Allahumma innaka Tuhibbul Afwa Fa’fu A’nne’. (O Allah! You are forgiving, and you love forgiveness. So forgive me.)
As children, we were told to tell the beads of the rosary, chanting whichever prayer we could remember; the very young would say something simple like ‘Allah ho Akbar’ or ‘Subhan Allah’. As we got older and memorized whole verses, such as the kalima and the qul, we were told to recite them several times before going to bed. Life has come full circle, as I now tell my daughters to do the same.
5
WHEN HASRAT PINED FOR
KRISHAN JI BHAGWAN
WHEN INDEPENDENCE DAY AND KRISHNA Janmashtami fall on the same day, one cannot but remember the maverick Maulana Hasrat Mohani, the most unusual of poet-politicians. This journalist and nationalist, freedom fighter and free thinker, who wrote some of the most sweetly romantic ghazals such as ‘Chupke chupke raat
din aansu bahana yaad hai’, who stood up against the might of the powerful progressive writers when they sought to move a motion banning obscenity in literature, is also credited with giving all freedom-loving Indians the most enduring cry of ‘Inquilab Zindabad’, which he first used as a slogan at a labour rally in Calcutta in 1928. As early as 1921, eight years before the Congress would push for poorna swaraj, it was Hasrat who was unequivocal in his demand for complete freedom, mukammal azadi, for India. A member of the Communist Party of India from its inception, he subsequently joined the Congress and, after a brief dalliance with the Muslim League, chose to stay on in free India as a conscientious objector. Independent and liberal-minded, he was a practising Muslim who had performed the Haj all of eleven times yet liked to call himself a ‘Sufi Muslim’ and an ‘Ishtiraki Momin’ (a Communist Muslim)! And to top it all, as though nothing was beyond the pale when it came to embracing seeming contraries, he was a devout Krishna bhakt who went to Mathura often to celebrate Janmashthami and also wrote the most lyrical ballads devoted to Krishan ji Bhagwan.
Some written in chaste Urdu, others in the Awadhi dialect, these love songs to Krishna contain a combination of irreconcilables that melt away in the face of true piety. Calling the Blue God ‘Hazrat Shri Krishna Alaihi Rahma’ (The Venerable Shri Krishna Blessed be His Name), Hasrat shows how it is entirely possible for a panch-waqta Musalman, one for whom worship of any deity is kufr, to adore the ‘other’:
Maslak-i ishq hai parastish-i husn
Hum nahin jaante aazab-o-sawaab
The path of love leads to the worship of beauty
I know neither reward nor punishment
Offering a clue to the light of love that lit his path - be it to Mecca or Barsana, Medina or Mathura, Ajmer or Nand Gaon, he writes of the fragrance, the bu-i uns, that permeates both:
Irfaan-e ishq naam hai mere maqaam ka
Haamil hun kis ke naghma-i nai ke payaam ka
Mathura se ahl-i dil ko woh aati hai bu-i uns
Duniya-i jaan mein shor hai jis ke dawaam ka
Labrez-i noor hai dil-i ‘Hasrat’ zahe naseeb
Ek husn-i mushkfaam ke shauq-i tamaam ka
The name of my destination is love’s knowledge
The message of whose melodious flute I carry
The scent of oneness wafts from Mathura to the people of heart
And suffuses the living world
It is Hasrat’s good fortune that his heart is brimful with the radiance
And love of that musk-scented beautiful one
Seeing no duality between his assiduous roza-namaz and ardent Krishna bhakti, this bearded, sherwani-clad gentleman from Mohan in the Unnao district of western Uttar Pradesh resorts to the more rustic Awadhi register to express his grand passion when the chaste Urdu metre fails him:
Mann tose preet lagai Kanhai
Kahu aur kisurati ab kaahe ko aayi
Gokula dhundh Brindaban dhundho
Barsane lag ghoom ke aayi
Tan man dhan sab waar ke ‘Hasrat’
Mathura nagar chali dhuni ramaye
My heart has fallen for you, Kanhai
How can it think of anyone else now?
I searched for him in Gokul and in Brindavan
I even went until Barsana looking for him
Having sacrificed everything for him, I Hasrat
Am now going to set up my abode in Mathura
Locked up in the Yervada Central Jail in Poona for his ‘seditious’ activities against the British government, with the coming of Janmashthami he could not contain his longing to go to Mathura:
Mathura ka nagar hai aashiqui ka
Dam bharti hai arzu issi ka
Har zarra-e sar-zamin-e Gokul
Daara hai jamaal-e dilbari ka
Barsana-o Nand Gaon mein bhi
Dekh aayein hain jalwa ham kisi ka
Paigham-e hayaat-e jaavidaan thha
Har nagma-e Krishn bansuri ka
Voh noor siyah ya ki ‘Hasrat’
Sar-chashma farogh-e-aagahi ka
Mathura is the city of love
All my desires are centred on it
Every particle of the dust of Gokul
Possesses loveliness and comeliness
Even in Barsana and Nand Gaon
I have seen that certain someone’s splendour
Whose message of reality is eternal
As is every note from Krishna’s flute
Like a dark radiance or is it Hasrat
Like a spring of water gushing knowledge
Living in an India that now requires us to be resolutely one or the other, the Maulana’s immense capacity to contain within himself many seemingly diverse ideologies and beliefs holds a lesson. It reminds us of Blake who said: ‘Without contraries there is no progression.’
6
BADA DIN: REJOICING THE BIRTH OF IBN-E-MARYAM
IBN-E-MARYAM, THE SON OF THE Virgin Mary, is a recurring figure in Urdu poetry. Sometimes appearing as an icon of fortitude, sometimes as the healer and provider of succour and mercy, Isa Masih, as Jesus Christ is called in Urdu, is the embodiment of love that Iqbal describes as ‘hararat li nafas-ha-e-masih-e-Ibn-e-Maryam se’ (the ardour of love’s breath taken from the Son of Mary). Perhaps the most often-quoted reference to Ibn-e-Maryam is by Mirza Ghalib who called out to the saviour in this enduring couplet:
Ibn-e-Maryam hua kare koi
Mere dukh ki dawa kare koi
Let there be a Son of Mary
To find a cure for my grief
And here is Ghalib again, invoking the life-giving figure of Christ in this lesser-known couplet:
Lab-e-Isa ki jumbish karti hai gahvara-jambani
Qayamat kushta-e-laal-e-butan ka khwab-e-sangin hai
The lips of Christ quiver like a rocking cradle
Apocalypse is the terrifying dream of the killing of the jewels of the beloved
Darshan Singh Duggal wrote an entire poem entitled ‘Ibn-e-Maryam’ describing Jesus as rooh ki azmat ka aina (the mirror reflecting the greatness of the soul), ahinsa ka payami (the messenger of non-violence), the one who gladly wore the crown of thorns upon his head:
Teri himmat muskurai ranj-o-gham ke daar pe
Tera azm-e-sarfaroshi rooh ke maidan mein
Your courage smiled at the scaffold of grief and sorrow
You had the courage to lay down your life in the field of life
The Urdu poet, forever subversive, forever looking for new ways to invoke old icons is irresistibly drawn to the figure of Christ on the cross as this verse by Saif Zulfi demonstrates:
Phaila tha masih-e-waqt ban kar
Simta to saleeb ho gaya hai
When he scattered he was like the Messiah of his time
When he gathered, he became a crucifix
While there appears to be little poetry on Bara Din (as Christmas is known among Urdu speakers) or specifically on the birth of the infant Jesus, there’s plenty that draws from the various incidents from the life of the Messiah. Painting a vivid picture of the Prophet giving the Sermon on the Mount, Mohammad Alvi gives a new spin to the story of the benedictions. Asking the assembled faithful how they can reap if they have not sown, how can they gather if they have not scattered anything, Ibn-e-Maryam in this retelling bids his followers to bury their sacks of ill-deeds for, perchance, they might bear delicious fruit from the trees of their good deeds. And it so happened:
… log apne makanon ki janib
Gunahon ko laade
Badhe ja rahe thhe
Aur tiley pe tanha khada Ibn-e-Maryam ajab lag raha tha
And the people were going towards their homes
Laden with their sins
And standing alone on the mount
The Son of Mary was looking so odd
In the face of all odds, here’s Khalid Karrar holding on to the hope of a second coming:
Hum abhi tak muntazir hain
Ab hamein kamil yaqin hai
Ibn-e-Maryam laut aayenge
We are still waiting
We have absolute faith
That the Son of Mary will return
And raise us from the dead
And here’s Kaifi Azmi wondering what would have happened to the world if this Son of God had not appeared amongst men for who, save he, would have gladly climbed the cross:
Tum Khuda ho
Khuda ke bete ho
Ya faqat aman ke payambar ho
Ya kisi ka haseen takhayyul ho
Jo bhi ho mujh ko achchhe lagte ho
Mujh ko sachche lagte ho
Are you God
Or the Son of God
Or are you simply the messiah of peace
Or are you a beautiful figment of someone’s imagination
Whoever you are, I like you
You seem true to me
But the greatest sense of ownership by far comes from Mustafa Zaidi who says:
Mere maathe pe jhalakta hai nadamat ban kar
Ibn-e-Maryam ka woh jalwa jo kalisa mein nahin
Like the patina of penitence, it glimmers on my forehead
That lustre of the Son of Mary that is not found in any church
7
HOLI: CELEBRATING GULABI EID
THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A tradition of diverse communities celebrating Holi across large parts of upper India. Called Gulabi Eid by the Mughals, there are accounts of the emperor and his courtiers throwing abeer and gulal on each other, as well as sprinkling coloured water made from the tesu flowers that bloom in abundance at this time of the year. The coming of spring, traditionally marked by Basant Panchami, was celebrated with gay abandon by the Sufis whose dargahs became great melting pots where cultures and civilizations met and flowered. Descendants of the qawwal bacchas trained by Amir Khusrau, the poet-disciple of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, still sing these verses composed over 700 years ago:
Aaj rang hai hey maa rang hai ri
Moray mehboob kay ghar rang hai ri
There’s colour today, O mother, there’s such colour today
There is such colour in my beloved’s home today
But You Don't Look Like a Muslim Page 17