KARACHI:

Mohammad Afzal’s Bikat Kahani is a Barahmasa poem and a fine example of unselfconscious cultural and linguistic pluralism; creative resistance to the linguistic hegemony of Farsi and Arabic in the Mughal court; an intentional tribute paid to the many North Indian vernacular bolis/dialects spoken by ordinary people in 16^th and 17th century Hindustan.

Before the Urdu-Hindi linguistic divisiveness was institutionalised in the 19th century, inclusion of words from the multi-linguistic tradition of the subcontinent was common in popular poetry. This is evident from Bikat Kahani’s liberal use of Farsi, Khariboli, Avadhi, Brij Bhasha and even Punjabi.

Languages were not used as divisive politico-religious weapons before the advent of British rule in India. Hindi was not just spoken by Hindus, and Urdu was not the exclusive language of Muslims. The lingua franca of North India was Hindustani — a composite language which, according to Indian author and Urdu-language poet Shamsur Rehman Faruqi, was spoken by all North Indians, Hindus and Muslims, and had nothing to do with religion. Faruqi writes: “We often tend to forget that the language we now call Urdu was, in olden times, also called Hindvi, Hindi, Dehlvi, Gujri, Dakhani, and Rekhta. The British coined different names for this language we now call Hindi-Urdu, such as Hindoostanic, Indostan and Hindoostanee… the word Urdu was used for the first time only around 1780. It is obvious that before the last quarter of the 18th century, Urdu was not the name of the language we now call Urdu…”

Maulvi Afzal’s Barahmasa

During the months of Covid lockdown, I spent many lazy afternoons reading poetry. The privilege of slowness, quietude and idleness made savouring poetry possible. One of the longish poems I read was Maulvi Mohammad Afzal’s Bikat Kahani — a love poem divided into 12 sections, consisting of rhyming couplets, written in the Barahmasa tradition of Hindustani poetry. Absolutely still, jewel-like raindrops poised on the branches outside my window, the air enveloped in velvety monsoon greyness, while I read Bikat Kahani. Why was I reading it? Does the heart need a reason to read poetry?

However, the reason became clear to me after I finished reading the poem: I must write about Maulvi Afzal. Not so highly regarded during his life, Maulvi Afzal wrote in the voice of a yearning feminine lover, unlike the Urdu ghazal tradition where the lover is always male. He fell in love with a Hindu woman, and followed her to Mathura, a city in Uttar Pradesh considered to be the birthplace of Lord Krishna.In order to stay near her, he gave up deen-o-dunya (social status and creed), and became an assistant to the head priest of a temple. Maulvi Afzal wrote in Emperor Akbar’s time, who himself was not averse to such errant romantic alliances. The political did indeed influence the personal.

Virahini ...the lovesick heroine. MINIATURE PAINTING REPRESENTING Barahmasa circa 1740 AD. Honolulu Museum of Art. USA

Linguistic Diversity in Bikat Kahani

‘Bikat’ is a Hindustani word meaning difficult or perilous, like the journey Maulvi Afzal undertook on the path of love. In his verses, he seamlessly mixes Farsi with Brij Bhasha/ Avadhi, Khari Boli and Punjabi. Several couplets are written entirely in Farsi or Khari Boli, while there are some couplets half in Farsi, half in Khari Boli, which is reminiscent of Amir Khusro’s poetry. A few examples of Afzal’s linguistic diversity:

Arre zalim! Na darri khauf rabb ka

Qayamat nazd hai, kar fikr tab ka

Dara kr az darun-e-dard-mandaan

Ke mi-sozad ze aatish sang-sandaan

O cruel one! Have you no fear of God

Have you no fear of the Day of Judgment

Fear the flaming (heart) of grief-stricken lovers

It can scorch the hardest stone-like hearts

This linguistic diversity in Bikat Kahani is liberating like love. It threatens to undo the restrictions imposed by monolingualism and challenges the hegemony of imposed languages. According to a National Geographic report[L2] , linguistic diversity is on its way to extinction. By the end of the century, more than half the 7,000 languages spoken on planet Earth will become extinct.

What can we do to embrace and promote linguistic diversity? I grew up speaking Bengali and Urdu. I now intentionally speak Urdu and I use more Hindustani words. I am also trying to learn Farsi and Sindhi. I grew up in Sindh but I was not taught Sindhi in school!

A short list of things to embrace in order to promote a multilingual culture:

• Start small: read Bikat Kahani in Urdu if you can (on rekhta.org).
• Aim to become bilingual, if not multilingual.
• Write bilingual prose and poetry.
• Teach your children to speak a regional language other than English and Urdu.
• Translate literature from other regional languages (other than Urdu) into your mother tongue.
• Make friends across different linguistic groups.
• Incorporate words from regional languages in your speech and writing.

Why should you try to do all this? Because of the looming threat of linguistic purism. Remember, languages have nothing to do with religious identity.

Maulvi Afzal’s Bikat Kahani is an ode to ordinariness, smallness and simplicity as opposed to the Farsi-embellished Urdu poetry that dominated the urban literary circles of 16th century North India. The spontaneity of Afzal’s couplets and the seamless mixing of many tongues makes Bikat Kahani a delicious linguistic fusion fare. In our linguistically purist times, Bikat Kahani is a delectable anomaly. Afzal explores longing and desire from the perspective of a virhani (a woman separated from her lover). Whereas contemporary writers hesitate to incorporate words into Urdu from Hindi, Sindhi, Balochi, Pashto, Punjabi, Siraiki etc, Afzal borrowed freely from the languages around him.

Why don’t we do the same? Many of us whose mother tongue is Urdu, hardly know other local languages well enough to borrow words from them. Narrow-minded nationalistic notions (Urdu is the declared language of Pakistan’s Muslims) and linguistic purism (Hindi is the language of Hindus) dissuades such linguistic borrowing. If at all contemporary Urdu writers borrow, they tend to borrow mostly from English.

Love in the time of consumerism

True lovers make bad consumers. “Living simply makes loving simple,” wrote bell hooks, an African American feminist writer-activist I revere. By contrast, living materialistically makes loving harder. Love by itself is an all-consuming state so that there’s little motivation left to hanker for much else. We have convinced ourselves that true love is at best unattainable or at worst not worth attaining, that it resides only in folktales, fairytales and love poetry. Love isn’t something you can buy although the market would convince you can. The relentless brainwashing to assuage the need for love with material things is the curse of our times.

But the 16^th-century scholar-lover-poet Maulvi Afzal moved to a different city simply to be close to his beloved. Afzal’s poetry embodies his life and his longings.

Religious Diversity in Bikat Kahani

Maulvi Afzal would probably have been tried for blasphemy in our times. He ends the Barahmasa by openly declaring love to be superior to all other forms of worldly identities. Indeed, he says even if lovers need to change their religion to secure the beloved’s love, they shouldn’t hesitate. Afzal concludes with the following advice:

Khamosh Afzal azeen mushkil kahani

Kasu ne hudd is dukh ki na jani

Ba yaad-e-dilruba khushal me baash

Gahe Afzal, gahe Gopal me baash

Be silent, Afzal, about the trials of love

No lover knows the end of this suffering

Live with memories of the enchanting beloved

Sometimes as Afzal, sometimes as Gopal

Afzal’s barahmasa was popular reading in his time, redolent of an era when love alone was a lover’s most serious business. It is of no importance whether you live as Afzal or a Gopal, as long as you live thinking about your beloved.

Bikat Kahani’s eroticism, its unabashed pining, expresses the longings of a feminine lover who, unable to bear the pangs of separation month after month, pleads with her sakhis, holy men, pundits and even spell-workers to devise spells to lure the lover back, and to the crows and pigeons to carry her missives to her lover, urging him to return:

Likhyun patian ay kaag le jaa

Saloney sanware sundar piya pa

Piya bin sejri nagan bhaee re

Hansan khelan ki sagri sudh gayee re

Sabhi sakhiyan piya sang sukh karat hain

Haman si paapyan nit dukh bharat hain

Fly away, O crow, with these missives of mine

Fly away to the land of that bewitching beloved

Without whom my bed strikes me as a serpent

Lost are my senses, my laughter, my playfulness

All my friends find pleasure with their lovers

Only sinners like me are forlorn and suffer

Cultural diversity in Bikat Kahani

Walah Daghastani’s 1747 tazkira (biography of poets) mentions that Maulvi Afzal took on the name Gopal (another name for Lord Krishna, the mythical lover of Radha) when he became a mandir’s pujari in Mathura. For years he remained the head priest’s disciple. Before the priest died, he designated Afzal as the head priest of the temple. Many years later, when Afzal’s beloved visited the temple, he told her who he was. She was overcome by his long-standing devotion and agreed to marry him even though they were both quite aged by then.

Hatred has predictable outcomes. Hatred divides, love unites, hatred segregates, separates, keeps us servile and fearful, and in a state of mutual distrust. Love is the antidote to all this, but love is also a threat for the status quo. Love is an unsettling state precisely because love threatens to topple the hierarchical socio-political-religious order.

Indeed, love unchecked could lead to anarchy.

Nighat Majid is a freelance contributor. All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer