An important feature of popular Islam has been the
supreme faith in the saint or pir or sayyid sustained through hardships. Most
of the times Muslims and Hindus shared the veneration of the same spiritual
guide. It goes to the credit of the great Persio Musico Mystical tradition of
sufiyana qalam that an essentially esoteric mystical tradition filtered down to commoners in comprehensible
and appealing form.
Sufiyana
qalams of Baba Farid, Shahbaz Qalandar, Bulleh Shah, Shah Bahoo, Shah Latif,
Khawaja Ghulam Farid, Shah Hussain, and Ali Haider some of the main great sufi
mystics of North west India form the kernel of these traditions. They are
undoubtedly among the best traditions of Indian Islam “…of poetry and music as an essential means of
devotional expression and the attainment of religious ecstasy”. These
traditions were formed in a largely pre literate oral context in which regional
languages like Sindhi, Pashto, Multani served as vernacular medium wherein were
“…translated the secrets of Divine love, longing and trust in the Prophet into
the vocabulary of farmers, pastoralists drawing and incorporating elements of
Indian bhakti mysticism. It is this simple, ‘rustic’ mystical piety which
colours large parts of Indian Islam”that
reflects so vividly in the many compositions performed by these hereditary
musicians for generations.
Chiefly
performed in dargahs and khanaqahs of Sufis associated with the Chisti silsila
the traditions celebrate the seminal importance of saints in revealing the
popular aspect of Islam.The Chisti
saints beginning with Baba Farid in the thirteenth century have played a
seminal role in the dissemination of Islamic culture through Sind and Hind. In
fact it has been observed by the great scholar Professor Mohammad Habib that “the
insistence of Chisti was not writing on mysticism but living according to it.
And the Chistis known for their simplicity “…combined harsh asceticism with
ardent love of music and poetry…”and “…allowed non-Muslim novices to ‘taste’
mystical experience…”. For most of the Chisti saints music was a
spiritual staple, not merely a permissible (halal) but a required
religious practice (wajib) as opening the inner and spiritual aspect of
Islam.
This Indo Pak frontier desert
region has been blessed with a number of Sufi saints, mostly of the Chisti
silsila. Their humble and rustic dargahs (shrines) in far away interiors amidst
grasslands is a testimony to their wilayat
(spiritual kingdom), of those who revered music as the vital colour (rang) of
Allah’s devotion.
