Kabīrकबीर

Kabīr (c. 1440–1518, by the most common dating; some place him earlier) was a weaver of Vārāṇasī and one of the greatest poets and religious thinkers of India. Born into a family of Muslim weavers (julāhās) of low status, he became the foremost voice of the nirguṇa strand of the The Bhakti Movement movement — devotion to a formless God beyond all qualities, found not in temples or mosques but within one’s own heart, through love, the name of God and the guidance of a true guru. He attacked the rituals, scriptures, priests and caste pride of Hindus and Muslims alike with ferocious wit, in the language of the common people: a mixture of Hindi dialects, Bhojpuri, Avadhī and Braj. His couplets (dohās or sākhīs), songs (padas) and riddling verses (ramainīs) were transmitted orally and are now among the most quoted lines in Hindi; generations of Indian schoolchildren learn them by heart. His followers form the Kabīr Panth; his hymns are part of the Sikh scripture; and he has been claimed by Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, reformers, Dalits and secular nationalists alike.

Life

Almost everything about Kabīr’s life is legend. He is said to have been found as a baby floating on a lotus in the Lahartara pond near Vārāṇasī by a Muslim weaver couple, Nīrū and Nīmā, who raised him — a story that conveniently gives him an unknown, perhaps Brahmin, birth. He worked as a weaver all his life; his poems are full of images of the loom, the thread, the shuttle. He is said to have married a woman called Loī and had a son, Kamāl, and a daughter, Kamālī.

His guru, by tradition, was the Vaiṣṇava teacher Rāmānanda, who taught devotion to Rāma to people of all castes. A famous story says that Rāmānanda would not accept a Muslim disciple, so Kabīr lay on the steps of the ghāṭ where Rāmānanda bathed before dawn; Rāmānanda stepped on him in the dark and exclaimed “Rām! Rām!” — and Kabīr took this as his initiation mantra. Whatever the truth, Kabīr’s “Rām” is not the prince of the Rāmāyaṇa but a name for the formless God.

He was persecuted by both Hindu and Muslim authorities; legends say that the Sultan Sikandar Lodī tried to kill him by drowning, burning and an elephant, and failed. At the end of his life he went to Maghar, a town said to send those who died there to rebirth as donkeys — deliberately, to mock the belief that dying in holy Kāśī (Vārāṇasī) brings liberation: “If Kabīr dies in Kāśī, what does he owe to Rām?” When he died, his Hindu and Muslim followers quarrelled over his body; lifting the sheet, they found only a heap of flowers, which they divided.

Teaching

God within

Kabīr’s God is everywhere and especially within:

मोको कहाँ ढूँढे बन्दे, मैं तो तेरे पास में। ना मैं देवल ना मैं मस्जिद, ना काबे कैलास में॥ Where are you searching for me, friend? I am right beside you. Not in the temple, not in the mosque, not in the Kaaba, not on Kailāsa.

कस्तूरी कुंडल बसे, मृग ढूँढे बन माहि। ऐसे घटि घटि राम हैं, दुनिया देखे नाहिं॥ The musk is in the deer’s own navel, but it roams the forest looking for it. So Rām is in every heart, but the world does not see.

Against ritual and sectarianism

He mocked Hindu and Muslim religion with equal severity:

पाहन पूजे हरि मिले, तो मैं पूजूँ पहार। ताते तो चाकी भली, पीस खाय संसार॥ If you could find God by worshipping stones, I’d worship a mountain. Better the grinding-stone at home — at least the world eats the flour it grinds.

कांकर पाथर जोरि के, मसजिद लई बनाय। ता चढ़ि मुल्ला बांग दे, क्या बहरा हुआ खुदाय॥ Piling up pebbles and stones, they built a mosque; the mullah climbs it and shouts the call to prayer — has God gone deaf?

He ridiculed pilgrimage, fasting, the sacred thread, circumcision, ritual bathing, idol-worship, and the pride of pandits and qazis in their learning. “The Hindu says Rām is the beloved, the Turk says Rahīm; the two fought each other to death, and neither knew the secret.”

Love and the name

What leads to God is not learning but love (prem) and the repetition of God’s name:

पोथी पढ़ि पढ़ि जग मुआ, पंडित भया न कोय। ढाई आखर प्रेम का, पढ़े सो पंडित होय॥ Reading books, the world died, and no one became wise. Whoever reads the two and a half letters of “love” becomes learned.

(Prem, “love”, has two and a half letters in Devanagari.)

The guru

Kabīr gave the true guru an exalted place:

गुरु गोविंद दोऊ खड़े, काके लागूं पांय। बलिहारी गुरु आपने, गोविंद दियो बताय॥ Guru and God both stand before me — whose feet should I touch first? I bow to the guru, who showed me God.

Death and impermanence

His poems are full of the nearness of death — the body as a clay pot, life as a bubble, the bazaar that closes at evening:

माटी कहे कुम्हार से, तू क्या रौंदे मोय। इक दिन ऐसा आएगा, मैं रौंदूंगी तोय॥ The clay says to the potter: why do you knead me so? A day will come when I will knead you.

काल करे सो आज कर, आज करे सो अब। पल में परलय होएगी, बहुरि करेगा कब॥ What you would do tomorrow, do today; what you would do today, do now. In a moment the world may end — when will you do it then?

Inward humility

बुरा जो देखन मैं चला, बुरा न मिलिया कोय। जो दिल खोजा आपना, मुझसा बुरा न कोय॥ I went looking for the wicked; I found no one wicked. When I searched my own heart, I found no one worse than me.

Texts

Kabīr wrote nothing; his poems were sung and transmitted orally in many versions. Three main collections survive: the Bījak, scripture of the Kabīr Panth, from eastern India; the Kabīr Granthāvalī, from Rajasthan; and the hymns in the Sikh Guru Granth Sahib (compiled 1604), the oldest dated source. Many poems attributed to him are later.

Legacy

Kabīr’s followers founded the Kabīr Panth, which survives with millions of members, mostly of low-caste background. Guru Arjan included over 500 of his verses in the Sikh scripture. Rabindranath Tagore translated One Hundred Poems of Kabir (1915) with Evelyn Underhill, introducing him to the West; Ezra Pound and Robert Bly followed. In modern India he became a symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity, of anti-caste protest, and of plain-spoken wisdom; his dohās appear in schoolbooks, film songs and political speeches. The scholar Purushottam Agrawal (Akath Kahani Prem Ki, 2009) and the singer Prahlad Tipanya have shown how alive his tradition remains.

Kabīr in conversation

For any argument about religion: “If God is in the mosque, whose is the rest of the world?” For any argument about learning: “the two and a half letters of love” make one wiser than a library. And for procrastination: kāl kare so āj kar.