The Night of Separation Is Long

By Brig A. R. Siddiqi, *Book review: Of ecstacy and devotion* - Dawn.com - Karachi, Pakistan
Monday, August 10, 2009

Amir Khusro
By Sheikh Saleem Ahmad
Nigharshat Publications, Lahore
ISBN 969479538-9
439 pp. Rs 320

The book makes a valuable addition to the scant literature available on the life and times of the musician, poet and scholar Amir Khusro (1253-1325).

It features excerpts from the writings of literary luminaries like Mohammad Hussain Azad, Maulana Shibli Noumani, Hafiz Mahmood Khan Sherwani, Professor Mohammad Habib, Dr Tara Chand and several others.

Dr Tara Chan’s ‘Khusro and India’ stands out as an incisive analytical study of the times of the royal poet, his personality and place as the herald of latter day Indian nationalism. However, Dr Tara Chand warns that the sentiments and philosophy of today’s nationalists are not to be mistaken for the love of the land, its people and the sheer joy of a sense of belonging without any doctrinal or political underpinnings.

Comparing Khusro’s love for India to modern nationalist theory and practice would be a gross injustice to the poet.

Politics of the medieval period was drawn on caste, familial/tribal ties, sectarian networking and of course, personal equation. The societal norms in that era were totally different from the contemporary values ‘therefore the quest for the present in the past would be an exercise in futility, almost like trying to reverse the course of the Ganga’.

Amir Khusro’s love for the land and his attachment to India was the same as that of an oak or a banyan tree to mother earth.

Today’s India’s, nationalist and secular, wealth in terms of language, art, culture and literature originated in the great genius of Khusro. His India lay in the fertile plains between Ganga and Jumna; its music and its finest flowering — the Urdu prose and poetry — reflect the soul of Hindustan.

Call it Urdu, Hindustani or Hindi; Urdu remains the lingua franca of Hindustan. This is not to deny the plethora of other regional languages spoken and written across the subcontinent.

Khusro’s experiment in intermixing Hindi/Urdu with Farsi without compromising the true essence and beauty of either remains a class by itself in linguistics. The following duha (couplet) should illustrate the point:

Shaban-i-Hijran daraaz chun zulf
Wa rooz-i-waslat chun umr kotha
Sakhi pia kou jou maay na dekhon
Tou kaise katoun andheri ratyan!

(The night of separation is long as his/her tresses while the spell of the union is as short as life itself.)

Khusro’s genius had a happy versatility which was without parallel; he could be playful as a child or as sombre and soulful as a Sufi saint.

His love for the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and devotion to Allah Almighty, while absolute, defied the soulless literalism of the orthodoxy. It was embedded in his soul like the very air he breathed.

Closer to the Chishtia school of Sufism, Amir Khusro and his guide and mentor Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya were two remarkably emancipated souls. Dedicated to the Islamic shariah they abhorred the orthodox making a fetish out of doctrine and reducing it to drab ritualism minus its euphoric devotional content.

Music as a form of hymn and ecstatic love for the Almighty remains an integral part of the Chishtia creed.

If read outside of its mystical context, some of the verses he devoted to Hazrat Nizamuddin almost touch the fringe of the carnal. Casting himself in the role of a maiden, he exchanges glances with ‘Nijam’ and returns as a woman consummated.

In chapter 11 of the book the compiler narrates the story of Khusro being taken with a handsome young baker. The boy responded, got close to Khusro and was initiated in the intricacies of Sufi lore. Yet another noted example is that of Shah Hussain of Lahore falling in love with a Hindu boy with the name Madhu Lal, and changing it to Madhu Lal Hussain.

Besides Urdu, Khusro gave Hindustan classical Khayal music, the sitar, and an immense wealth of folklore in poetry and prose.

His life was an exquisite floral bouquet of the spiritual and the temporal; of ecstasy, love and devotion.

When his guide and mentor Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya passed away Khusro happened to be away from Delhi. On his return, after offering fateha at his mentor’s mazaar, he ad-libbed the following couplet which is expressive of his immense sense of loss:

Gauri sove saij pe mukh pe daare kais
chal khusro rone ghar apne sanjh hoi chaundes

(Here lies the maiden, her locks streaming across her face/It’s nightfall, Khusro and time to go back home).

He died shortly afterwards.

Picture: Closer to the Chishtia school of Sufism, Amir Khusro and his guide and mentor Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya were two remarkably emancipated souls. — File photo