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kuuchaa-e-yaar ain Kaasii hai
jogii-e-dil vahaaN kaa baasii haipii ke bairaag kii udaasii suuN
dil pe mere sadaa udaasii haiBeloved’s lane is exactly like holy city of Kashi
My ascetic heart dwells thereinDue to the sadness of the separation from the beloved
My heart is always immersed in dejection
Wali Dakhani
Wali Dakhani, credited as the father of Urdu poetry, was essentially a Sufi and like many others of his ilk didn’t stay at a place for long. His tours took him to Ahmedabad, Burhanpur, Surat and Delhi. He visited Delhi for quite a few times and it is believed that the poets in Delhi started writing in Urdu after appreciating the beauty of Dakhani’s verses. That same Delhi then gave us Mir, Ghalib and Zauq. Not that we have preserved the heritage of Mir and Ghalib diligently, as Mir lies unnoticed somewhere near a railway station in Lucknow and Ghalib’s haveli was recently reclaimed from a coal merchant, but the fate that befell Wali is truly heart-wrenching. May be Ghalib composed this couplet for such an occasion:
hu’e mar ke ham jo rusvaa, hu’e kyuuN na garq-e-daryaa
na kahiiN janaazaa uThtaa na kahiiN mazaar hotaaThat I died and was disgraced, why was I not just drowned
never was there a funeral, no where was a tomb erected
On 8th March 2002, the shrine of Wali Dakhani was razed to the ground just 10 meters away from Ahmedabad Commissioner of Polices’ headquarters. Overnight a tarred road was constructed on that spot. Here is a clip from the documentary Final Solution by Rakesh Sharma that shows the place where Dakhani’s shrine used to be.
The tomb of Ustad Faiyaz Khan in Vadodara suffered the same fate and so did scores of other shrines. The attackers knew what they were doing. On any given there are as many Hindus, if not more, as there are Muslims visiting Sufi shrines. It is criminal to even think of music in terms of Hindu and Muslim but classical singers have always been patronized by Hindu kings. Even Ustad Faiyaz Khan was a court musician in Vadodara. By destroying symbols of our shared cultural heritage the attackers were creating a wedge between the communities that would be very difficult to bridge. If there is one thing extremists hate the most is the common ground. When the propaganda machines are working overtime to prove that ‘others’ are really different, then it serves their purpose to raze to ground every symbol that claims otherwise.
We are living in an increasingly globalized but increasingly polarized world. Finding commonalities and celebrating differences has been part of our rich Indian cultural tradition. Let us find ways to carry forward that great Indian tradition. To quote Wali again:
tuk “Wali? ki taraf nigaah karo
subh suuN muntazir hai darshan kaaO my love just have a look at “Wali? for a while
He is waiting for your sight since the morning
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Shocking…to say the least…and very painful to hear that we have no respect for art and culture anymore. If we start dividing even art and poetry on communal lines, we will totally degenerate as a nation. I remember reading about Umrao Jaan Ada’s grave, after the remake ‘Umrao Jaan’ was released – that half the grave has been covered by a road, with little regard to the sentiments of her extended family who couldn’t do anything to save it.
While I am for preserving heritage, I would add this:
It may be that in Gujarat the saffron boys wilfully did the desecration. On a whole though, our country, we as a people, have never had the sense of history which then compels you to accord the requisite care to artefacts of the past. This is true across religion. There are many many great Indian personalities, of every caste creed and religion, that have just receded into the dust, without as much as a small board to commemorate them. Thats been our sense of ourselves. Which is okay, with me, for the large part (cos am more concerned about our present). When we naturally get to a point where we cherish and want to protect our history, its welcome. But doing it just for the sake that its the done thing in ‘modern’ or ‘western’ societies will not gain us much.
So we can and should denounce the willful desecration of such things, but we should also remember that we as a society never were history-conscious (at least not in the sense of preserving objects).
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