Aaj Rang Hai Ri Maa Rang Hai Ri, Amir Khusro Options

[anjvajay]

My millennium man - Amir Khusro

An Article by Aakar Patel


Seven hundred years before Partition, four centuries before the first Englishman landed at Surat, the identity of the subcontinent’s people — that wispy and nebulous apparition — was given comprehensive shape and definition in one magical era.

The years have eroded the authority of that definition. Is it important, in these days when Kashmir alone evokes strong discourse among people of the subcontinent, that we revisit that moment of clarity? By way of justification, then.

Our story is set in 13th century Delhi, in the area now known as Nizamuddin, named after the dargah of the Sufi also referred to as Mehboob-é-Elahi – Hazrat Nizamuddin Awliya.

The saint lies buried next to the man he fondly called the Turk, his greatest disciple. Poet, musician, inventor, philosopher, linguist. The name of Amir Khusro Dehlavi (1253-1325) is synonymous with the culture of the subcontinent. Without him our music would sound different, it would be played on different instruments, and it would be sung in another language. Khusro was musician in the court of seven kings in Delhi, from Allauddin Khilji to Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq.

Many legends surround Khusro: that he split the gonging, resonating pakhavaj and invented the tabla; that he gave Hindustani music its voice and vocabulary after authoring its first formal raag, the Yaman-Kalyan; that he influenced Hazrat Nizamuddin Awliya to miraculously cure Mian Samat, a deaf-mute boy who later became the head of Hindustani music’s first and greatest gharana, the Qawwal Bachche.

These legends are driven by belief in the absence of documentation. On a few facts there is no dispute. Khusro blended Persian, the language of the court, with Bhojpuri, the language of the people, and wrote his poetry and songs and riddles in what he called Hindvi, the precursor to modern Hindi and Urdu.

He took the Sufism of the Chistiya Silsila and made it sing, inventing qawwali. He modified the ancient Indian tradition of Dhrupad, then the principle form of music practised on the subcontinent, adding Persian beat and melody.

From the Hindu bhajan he borrowed the concept of directly addressing God in prayer-song with a chorus, his singers clapped efficiently in accompaniment as angels are believed to do when enlightened souls approach heaven. His music became immensely popular with Hindus and Muslims, receiving patronage in the courts of kings of both religions.

The qawwal stream generated other forms over time, incorporating local tradition and morphing in length and structure till it came to totally dominate most northern traditions and made them one: Khayal or Hindustani classical as we now know it.

His disciples and their descendants sang his music in the court of every Delhi ruler, down to Tanras Khan ‘Dasnewala’, singer in the court of Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’, last Mughal emperor of India. Khusro’s tradition has passed unbroken across seven centuries and 30 generations. No other form of music anywhere on earth can claim such pedigree. Meraj Ahmed ‘Nizami’ and Hasan Sani ‘Nizami’, current head of the Qawwal Bachche and guardian of the tomb of Nizamuddin Awliya, still sing in Delhi; the Warisi brothers, descendants of Tanras Khan Dasnewala, look for work in Hyderabad.

Qawwal’s greatest modern exponent, Ustan Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pakistan’s patron saint of music, belonged to a 600-year old musical tradition that was rooted in religion but outgrew it to become part of a nation’s identity. Among his ancestors, Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan counted Mian Dad Sahib and Mian Khaliq, who were renowned singers of Dhrupad, the chanting of the Rigveda to the strains of a tanpura and accompanied only by a pakhavaj.

Though deeply devout, both Amir Khusro and Nizamuddin Awliya scorned organised religion, believing that the clergy was more interested in temporal power than in God.

A fortnight after Eid-ul-Fitr falls the Urs of Amir Khusro, as many Hindus attend the celebrations at Nizamuddin as Muslims. It is very unlikely that they do so to safeguard India’s secular tradition; perhaps they do so because it is natural to celebrate the life of a man who defined, through his love of God and music and through his genius, our culture and our history.