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Magazine
Legacy on fire
RAJNI BAKSHI
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Shekhar Sen's play "Kabeer" offers sustenance to those who revere and live by the legacy of the poet-saints who helped to foster creative co-existence of different religious sects all over India. In a time of communal tension, cultural intervention like this is important to reach out to people.
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Shekhar Sen as Kabir.
SHEKHAR SEN'S one-man play "Kabeer" ends on a potentially depressing note. Even as the mystic poet is dying, some of his followers and admirers have begun to quarrel over what to do with his mortal remains. The Hindus want Kabir's body to be cremated and the Muslims want it to be buried. Legend has it that Kabir's body magically turned into flowers, which were then divided in half between Hindus and Muslims.
In Shekhar Sen's rendition, Kabir's soul cries out across the ages, lamenting the ignorance of those who want to "claim" him either as Hindu or Muslim. Such people will never find God, says the heartbroken Kabir. The 123rd show of Shilpkaar Productions' play "Kabeer" was performed at the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai in early March, while Gujarat was being engulfed by communal violence. At such a time, thinking about the woeful ending of Kabir's grand life can easily push one further into despair. Some may even feel an enraged sense of futility in attempting to counter communal hatred with the help of Kabir's couplets and poems. If Kabir could not prevent Hindus and Muslims from fighting in his own lifetime, can we hope to do any better by leaning on his legacy? The obvious answer seems to be "No". But, fortunately, reality is richly multi-dimensional. A closer look at some of these dimensions offers clues for the agonising question that has once again come to haunt many Indians. That is, how do we diffuse communal tension and polarisation?
Before exploring the historical aspects let us first look at the personal dimension. The ultimate victory for the proponents of hatred is at an individual and personal level. The words and deeds of those who promote communal strife are so profoundly repulsive, that even the most warm-hearted peace-lover can experience a burst of rage and hatred towards the "hate-mongers". This additional generation of the negative emotions pushes us still further away from the goal of harmony and creative co-existence. In this situation it is truly futile to jump into the fray virtually "armed" with Kabir's poems and couplets. After all, the power is not in the words themselves but in living, or at least attempting to live, their truth. This means looking closely at Kabir's, initially painful, longing for the divine. Then there are exquisite glimpses of Kabir's ecstasy in finding that universal love is not the goal, rather it is the means for self-realisation.
Many of us may feel that these are fine ideals, to be admired at a distance, but difficult to actually practise. Yet this is the intention we reaffirm every time we place Kabir's verses on posters and pamphlets for communal harmony. It is a short step from there to realising that then we also cannot hate those who thrive on spreading hatred. This dimension is carefully brought forth by the play "Kabeer" which has been brilliantly written and enacted by the Mumbai-based singer and actor Shekhar Sen. In about two hours, Sen re-creates on stage the life and times of Kabir who lived 600 years ago in North India.
The play opens on the scene of a Brahmin widow, reluctantly and painfully, giving up her infant "illegitimate" son. The baby, placed in a basket and set afloat on the Ganges, is rescued by a childless Muslim weaver and his wife who immediately take him into their heart and home. Even as a child, Kabir finds that he is treated as an inferior both by the mulla in the Masjid and the pandit in the temple — for the shadowy circumstances of his birth are an open secret. The teenaged Kabir enjoys riling the mullas by asking if God is hard of hearing — why else do they shout out the daily prayers from the minar of the Masjid? If God is all-pervasive, Kabir asks the Hindu priests, why the worship of idols?
Historically, Kabir has been regarded as a bridge across sectarian divides. These divisions have been cause of tension not only between Hindus and Muslims but also a wide range of sects within each tradition. Kabir does not stand alone. Over the last 600 years the Indian sub-continent has been home to hundreds of poet-saints whose life and work are today known as the Bhakti Movement. The continuing legacy of the poet-saints nurtured the cultural soil in special ways that helped to foster creative co-existence of different religious sects all over India. At the same time there remained theological and political issues over which Hindus and Muslims could be made to hate each other. Both these streams have together made up the history of India.
The crisis today is that those who foster conflict have become more powerful than ever before, with the RSS-VHP-BJP combine heading the Central Government. There is also a pervasive fear that, in the everyday life of ordinary people, the legacy of the poet saints is being severely eroded. There is a general impression that more and more people are joining the ranks of those who quarrelled over the mortal remains of Kabir. Yet, shows of "Kabeer" are warmly greeted by audiences everywhere.
Shilpkaar has taken the play to cities all over India, North America, Europe and to villages in North India. Last year Sen took the play to Varanasi, Kabeer's birthplace, and then performed in 14 villages and small towns en route to Magahar where Kabir died. True, the present moment calls for urgent fire fighting. The most immediate issue is not the Hindu-Muslim divide but the crisis of governance that has been precipitated by events in Gujarat and the subsequent stand taken by the BJP. There is no substitute for immediate political intervention to diffuse this crisis. Yet, even if these fire-fighting endeavours are successful, the long-term challenge remains. It is at this level that a cultural intervention like Shekhar Sen's play "Kabeer" plays a vital role. At the very least it offers sustenance to those who revere and live by the legacy of the poet-saints. And it reaches out to some among those who are susceptible to the propaganda of hatred and inspires them to rethink.
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