This week I would like to retell stories about the Punjabi Sufi Bulle Shah (1680-1735), also called Bulleya and Bulla. The Qadiri Sufis of the old Punjab were renowned for their philosophical studies. Their worldview profoundly impacted the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh’s efforts at religious syncretism in his book Majma ul Bahrain, the ‘Mingling of Oceans’. And it was a Qadiri Sufi, Shah Inayat, who was Bulle Shah’s pir or spiritual guide.
Shah Inayat Qadiri, was a spiritual descendant of Muhammed Ghaus of Gwalior, who introduced yoga to Sufism in the 16th century, highlighting points of contact. Shah Inayat Qaditi worked with outward simplicity as an arain or market gardener. In a work attributed to him called ‘Dastur-ul-Amal’, he is said to have vividly described the Hindu paths to moksha. Shah Inayat Qadiri is said to have written many books, which were later lost in a fire that broke out in the house of his descendants during the troubled times following the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
Bulle Shah, with newly-initiated zeal, spoke and sang openly of the unity underlying Hinduism and Islam. But since the political situation of that era was against liberal Sufis—as in truly liberal, not ‘Westernised anti-Hindu’ as widely understood today - Shah Inayat Qadiri forbade him to speak of it. He, himself, practised haqiqat, a Sufi’s spiritual reality, under the cover of tariqat, the established path, meaning orthodox Islam.
Bulle Shah’s insistence on outspoken liberalism upset his teacher who barred him from his presence. Knowing however of Shah Inayat Qadiri’s love of music and dance, Bulle Shah began to learn these arts from a dancing girl and one day, when he was proficient enough, began to sing and dance, dressed as woman, outside a place his teacher had entered. Attracted by the sound, Shah Inayat Qadiri emerged and Bulle Shah conveyed in verse his wish for reconciliation with his beloved guru. The teacher, a true liberal at heart, recognised him and asked if he was ‘Bulla’.
“Not ‘Bulla’, but ‘Bhoola’ (the erring one)”, said the pupil penitently and was promptly restored to his teacher’s good graces, remaining with him until he passed away.
It is fascinating how Bulle Shah’s verses mark his progress from being one to becoming one-with- the-One. He was born into a noble family of Syeds at Qasur, now in Pakistan. His early life coincided with the last harsh years of the reign of Aurangzeb who died in 1707, leaving his empire in every kind of ferment, especially religious. As a child, Bulla was prone to long periods of contemplation, which worried his family. At the madrassa, the moulvi began to teach Bulla’s class of little boys the alphabet. While the others rapidly progressed, Bulla stayed lost in contemplation of ‘alif’ (A). Within its pure, upstanding line, he said, he beheld the Creator and all creation. This may well be a piece of later folklore, but it links culturally with the teaching in Indian classical music that all music is contained within the first note, Sa.
Tormented by inchoate spiritual longings while nagged by his anxious family to live out his life as a nobleman, Bulla went for a long ride and chanced upon his spiritual master in the oddest place, a kitchen garden. As Bulla knelt before him in an ecstasy of recognition, Inayat Qadiri spoke as he worked: “Bulleya, Rab da kee paana? Idhron putna te odhar laana”. ‘Bulleya, do you seek God? Put your soul from here (below) to there (on high)’.
Bulla’s noble family was outraged that he should lay his heart at the feet of a ‘lowly’ arain, but he was steadfast in his resolve. He adopted the local Kaafi style of Sufi devotional singing. (There is also a raga called ‘Kaafi’, originating from folk music. Ustad Bismillah Khan played it on the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15, 1947).
Bulla’s poetry drew imagery from Waris Shah’s Punjabi love story of Heer-Ranjha, allegorising God as Ranjha and himself as Heer, pining for the beloved. It linked with Krishna-bhakti, where the love of Radha for Krishna was a high allegory for the human’s longing for God, and with Advaita philosophy, the longing of the jivatma or individual soul to merge in the Paramatma, the Supersoul.
Bulla’s poetry stayed within the folkways of Punjabi dargah-mela culture until 1973 and Raj Kapoor’s film Bobby. The singer, Narendra Chanchal, raised in a devout Punjabi family, shared Bulla’s syncretic religious approach in the song Beshaq mandir-masjid toro/Bulle Shah ae kendah/Par pyaar bhara dil na toro/Is dil mein dilbar rehnda.
Bulla’s original verse goes: ‘Masjid dhaade, mandir dhaade/ Dhaade jo kuchh dhainda/Ik kisi da dil na dhaanvin/Rab dilaan vich rehnda’, meaning, ‘Break the mosque and break the temple/Break what can be broken/But do not break the human heart/Within which God abides.’ Today this poignant verse seems to urge a deeper nationhood through harmonising the God-seeking impulses of both Sanatana Dharma and Islam.
As a Sufi seeker, Bulle Shah had to resist the protests of the orthodoxy, given the religiously inflammable 17th-18th centuries. He sang: ‘Mullah, maar na boliyaan/Sannu apna yaar rijhaavan de/Kanjri baniyaan meri ijjat na ghat di/ Mujhe nachke yaar manaavan de’, meaning, ‘Mullah, call me not to prayer/Let me please my Beloved/Though I become a woman of the streets, I lose no honour/Let me dance for his pleasure.’
Calling the communities together, he sang in the poem Hindu na nahin Mussalman: ‘Not Hindu, not Muslim, let us sit to spin without religious pride/Not Sunni, not Shia, I take the path of the One’.
The reward of unity was priceless and its secret lay in loving surrender to the One. Only then could the seeker proclaim triumphantly as Bulle Shah eventually did: ‘Saiyyon hun sajjan mein paiyo/Har-har de vichh samaiyo’, meaning, ‘O Friends, I have found the Beloved now: He pervades each one of us!’
(shebaba09@gmail.com )
Renuka Narayanan