Bulle Shah Banned to Sing Qawwali

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• published: 25 Jan 2014
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Sufi saint Baba Bulle Shah was stopped while singing a sufi Qawwali by some religious people, they assaulted him and beaten up for singing songs. A group of Pakistani artists presented the urdu-punjabi comedy play "Bulleh Shah" in Kamani Auditorium during an International Music and Dance festival in New Delhi. Bulleh Shah, sometimes Bulla(h) Shah (1680--1757) (Punjabi: بلہے شاہ) was a Punjabi Sufi poet, humanist and philosopher. His full name was Syed Abdullah Shah Qadri. A large amount of what is believed to be known about Bulleh Shah comes through legends, and is subjective; to the point that there isn't even agreement among historians concerning his precise date and place of birth. Some information about his life has been pieced together from his own writings. Other "facts" seem to have been passed down through oral traditions. Bulleh Shah is believed to have been born in 1680 in the small village of Uch, Punjab, India- which is in present-day Pakistan. His father, Shah Muhammad Darwaish, was a teacher and preacher in a village mosque. When he was six months old, his parents relocated to Malakwal. His father later got a job in Pandoke[disambiguation needed], about 50 miles south-east of Kasur. Bulleh Shah received his early schooling in Pandoke and moved to Kasur for higher education. He also received education from Maulana Mohiyuddin. His spiritual teacher was the Qadiri Sufi Shah Inayat Qadiri, who was a member of the Arain tribe of Lahore. Bulleh Shah's time was marked with communal strife between Muslims and Sikhs. But in that age Baba Bulleh Shah was a saint of hope and peace for the citizens of Punjab. While Bulleh Shah was in Pandoke, Muslims killed a young Sikh man who was riding through their village in retaliation for murder of some Muslims by Sikhs. Baba Bulleh Shah denounced the murder of an innocent Sikh and was censured by the mullas and muftis of Pandoke. Bulleh Shah maintained that violence was not the answer. Bulleh Shah died in 1757 in Kasur. Tradition has it that Islamic scholars of the time forbade local imams to carry out Bulleh Shah's funeral, considering him an infidel. However, after he was buried outside of the city, his tomb started attracting thousands of pilgrims from the region, and soon the center of Kasur moved to that place. Today, a large festival (urs) is celebrated at the tomb every year. Bulleh Shah lived in the same period as the Sindhi Sufi poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhatai (1689--1752). His lifespan also overlapped with the Punjabi poet Waris Shah (1722--1798), of Heer Ranjha fame, and the Sindhi Sufi poet Abdul Wahab (1739--1829), better known by his pen name Sachal Sarmast. Amongst Urdu poets, Bulleh Shah lived 400 miles away from Mir Taqi Mir (1723--1810) of Agra. Bulleh Shah practiced the Sufi tradition of Punjabi poetry established by poets like Shah Hussain (1538--1599), Sultan Bahu (1629--1691), and Shah Sharaf (1640--1724). The verse form Bulleh Shah primarily employed is called the Kafi, a style of Punjabi, Sindhi and Saraiki poetry used not only by the Sufis of Sindh and Punjab, but also by Sikh gurus. Bulleh Shah's poetry and philosophy questioned the Islamic religious orthodoxy of his day. Bulleh Shah's writings represent him as a humanist, someone providing solutions to the sociological problems of the world around him as he lives through it, describing the turbulence his motherland of Punjab is passing through, while concurrently searching for God. His poetry highlights his mystical spiritual voyage through the four stages of Sufism: Shariat (Path), Tariqat (Observance), Haqiqat (Truth) and Marfat (Union). The simplicity with which Bulleh Shah has been able to address the complex fundamental issues of life and humanity is a large part of his appeal. Thus, many people have put his kafis to music, from humble street-singers to renowned Sufi singers like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pathanay Khan, Abida Parveen, the Waddali Brothers and Sain Zahoor, from the synthesized techno qawwali remixes of UK-based Asian artists to the Pakistani rock band Junoon.