Book Review

‘Poetics and Politics of Sufism and

Bhakti in South Asia:
Love, Loss and Liberation’
-Nimish Nanda

The book is an interesting read for those who want to glanc e over similar ideas
across various cultures floating in the pool of ideas of Sufism and Bhakti. The
book is a collection of various academic works o f scholars, edited by Kavita
Panjabi. The book includes works from Kabir, Malik Muhammad Jayasi, Guru
Nanak, Mirabai, Amir Khusrao etc. It includes the ideas of syncretism that
propagated in the performance st yles of these m ystics. At various points, it
compares Sufism and Vedanta, Bhakts and Courtesans, the Sacred and the
Secular; which gives a comparative anal ysis of all these famous ideas and lets
us look into the intricacies of them. It takes us through the journey of poetry of
Kabir, to the Shabads of Guru Nanak, the syncretic texts of medieval Karnataka ,
Khayal of Khusrao, Baul, and in the end, towards the notion of Viraha in
Nehruvian era.

The most interesting point of this book is that it is not just about the
performance of the Sufi -Bhakti repertoire, rather it is also about the religious -
political circumstances to which, these repertoires were responding to. It also
speaks about how the i deas of viraha and milan, hijr and vasl, ana-l haqq and
aham brahmasmi find their expressions in modern day cinema, poetr y, dance,
etc. The madness of Sufi’s raqs, Mira’s bavrapan, Baul’s khepamo, or the
baurana of Nanak were their responses to their ext ernal world and history, and
this language of ‘madness’ transformed in time and became a part of the cultural
memory of the subcontinent . According to this book, Sufism and Bha kti become
important because they become a site of contestation between the ‘sacred’ and
the ‘secular’. The writings which express the longing for the beloved - by Bulleh
Shah, Shah Latif, Vaishnavas etc. - give new meanings to secular legends of
Heer-Ranjha, Saasi -Punhoon, Radha-Krishna and give a ‘sacred’ and angle to
the ‘secular’; hence, complicate the history or create two parallels around the
same legend but adds up to its aesthetic value.
The Sufi-Bhakti cult (in the South Asian context) belonged to the warrior -saints
and women, lower caste peasants and arti sans, boatmen etc. Hence, these sites
could act a space through which the dissent against the established orthodox y of
Hinduism and Islam could emerge. Hence, similar ideas of dissent aided in the
interflow of ideas due to the ir intertextualities, hence, led to the literary,
cultural and spiritual convergences in the I ndian subcontinent. Such linkages
between the cultures were not static, comprised of dynamic processes that often
developed out of situations of conflict.

The openness of the Sufi -Bhakti tradition has helped it to hold valence even
today, instead of bei ng devoid of any sacred text or sacred sanction from any
religion. The flexibilit y, openness and adaptabilit y , has helped it to sustain
itself. The emotional appeal and creative poetics have further added to it.
Moreover, the moder n day major languages of north India- Hindi and Urdu; have
sprouted out from Hindawi, to which the Sufis like Amir Khusrao have
contributed so much, that the voca bulary of these languages have an undertone
of the words from the Sufi-Bhakti tradition. The appropriation of Mirabai’s
bhajans by M.K. Gandhi and the reproduction of the Sufi -Bhakti ideas by
Bombay cinema in the 1950s added up to the ideas that were on ce propagated in
the medieval times, but with a certain different angle.

The book wisel y plays between the cultural material, trajectories, theoretical
approach, textualities and ambiguities of gender in Sufism and Bhakti. It also
glances over the aspects beyond the verbal language i.e. the poetics and the
st yles of performance. Bu t it always stays around the central idea ‘love and
separation in love ’ (it is very evident from the title of the book also) and how
these ideas lead to the state of liberation. The text in the book is interspersed
with the poems, dohe, kaafi, shabad, bhaj an etc of various m ystics cited in the
chapters along with the writings or explanation of performances of some modern
day artists who have expressed similar ideas in the ir art. This book contains
works of various authors, hence, gives various approaches to the same kind of
notion through various point s of view by looking at the lives and works of
various saints, bhakts, mureeds, poets, writers of the Sufi -Bhakti tradition.

The last chapter of the book makes the reader wonder that how Boll ywood
appropriates the ideas of these m ystics and renders a very new kind of meaning
which decontextualizes the text entirel y. The same tradition is still being
followed by the popular media.

The main problem with the book is that sometimes, the points become repetitive
and hence the reader might lose the focus because of this repetition . Moreover,
some parts of the book (including the index) have spelling mistakes, which is
highl y unexpected from such kind of academic work.

The comprehensiveness of the book and the various points of view, that it
provides, helps us to get a notion of how the Sufi -Bhakti tradi tion operated in
the South-Asia - in different regions, different languages and how their ideas
get manifested in the modern times in pop -culture. The politics within which,
this tradition operated and its contribution to the language, art and cultural
memory of the subcontinent is a worth takeaw ay from the book. The presence of
softness in the form of love and at the same time, the presence of a strong
political stand in the poetry of these m ystics gives the reader, a sense of the
socio-political-religious situations of that time and why there was a need of
such a tradition against the mainstream religions of that time.