Fakir Lalon Shah (
Bangla: ফকির লালন সাঁই), also known as
Lalon Shah (c. 1774–1890), was a Bengali philosopher poet. His poetry, articulated in songs, are considered classics of the Bangla language. Fakir Lalon Shah lived in the village of
Cheuria in the area known as
Nadia in the
Bengal Presidency of
British India, corresponding to the district of
Kushtia in present-day
Bangladesh.
Early life
Lalon is said to be born in the year 1772 October'17 in Harishpur village, shoilkupa upazila in Jhenaidah district. He was buried sewria, kustia.
The details of Lalon's early life are made controversial mainly by urban-educated scholars representing communal tendencies among both Hindu and Muslim writers. Lalon also recorded very little information about himself. a result, accounts of Lalon's life are sites of speculative communal claims that has remained till today contradictory and unverifiable. Depending on the source, some claim Lalon was born of Hindu Kayastha parents and during a pilgrimage to Murshidabad with other Bauls of his native village, he contracted a virulent type of small pox and was abandoned by his companions in a precarious condition on the banks of the Ganges. Another story claims that he is Muslim by birth and his village and family links are still traceable. However, it is true that a Muslim man of the weaver community, Malam Shah, and his wife Matijan took him to their home and nursed him back to life. It is clear, however, that he never revealed his social identity because of his consistent opposition against all forms of communal identity. He refused all his life to be trapped into the politics of identity of any kind. When people, particularly members of the urban the middle class who were already divided into Hindu and Muslim during colonial period, asked about his religion, Lalon mocked them. Many of his songs make mockery of those who degraded themselves to identity politics that divides a community, thereby creating conditions that generate communal conflict and violence. It is important that his intention is retained in any attempt to reconstruct a historiography of this great saint who even refused to be nationalist during the apex of the anti-colonial nationalist movements in the Indian subcontinent.Lalon Shah married a Muslim woman and set up his ashram in Cheurriya to compose and practise his songs. With regard to identity the following song is fairly well known among his many other similar articulations:
Who is that Nizamuddin aulia Lalon was singing great robber and aulia, could some one explain?
They are curious to know what Lalon's faith is,
Says Lalon: The shape of religion eludes my vision.
Circumcision tells a Muslim from others,
But what is the mark of his woman?
The Brahman is known by his thread,
How do I tell who is a Brahmani?
Philosophy
Lalon left no trace of his birth or his 'origin' and remained silent about his past, fearing that he would be cast into class,
caste or communal identities by a fragmented and hierarchical society. Despite this silence on his origins, communal appropriation of this great politico-philosophical figure has created a controversy regarding whether he is '
Muslim' or a '
Hindu' -- a '
sufi' or a follower '
bhakti' tradition—a 'baul' or a '
fakir', etc. He is none, as he always strove to go beyond all politics of identities. Lalon sang, “People ask if Lalon Fakir is a Hindu or a Mussalman. Lalon says he himself doesn’t know who he is.”
Lalon does not fit into the construction of the so called 'bauls' or 'fakirs' as a mystical or spiritual types who deny all worldly affairs in desperate search for a mystical ecstasy of the soul. Such construction is very elite, middle class, and premised on the divide between 'modern' and 'spiritual' world. It also conveniently ignores the political and social aspects of Bengal's spiritual movements and depoliticizes the transformative role of 'bhakti' or 'sufi' traditions. This role is still continued and performed by the poet-singers and philosophers in oral traditions of Bangladesh, a cultural reality of Bangladesh that partly explains the emergence of Bangladesh with distinct identity from Pakistan back in 1971. Depicting Lalon as 'baul shomrat' (the Emperor of the Bauls) as projected by elite marginalizes Lalon as a person belonging to a peripheral movement, an outcast, as if he is not a living presence and increasingly occupying the central cultural, intellectual and political space in both side of the border between Bangladesh and India (West Bengal).
To understand Fakir Lalon Shah is to understand the politics of lifestyle that he practiced. He never was a celebrator of the state of nothingness sometime associated the generic folk cultural movemets known as 'baul'. His position should not be construed, as a willing suspension of disbelief, nor a reckless abandonment of responsibility or that of becoming inordinately fatalistic. It is a living quest to go back to the dynamics of where it all began: to our infancy as much as the first moments of creation. It is a quest we cannot undertake without some prodding assistance, albeit to our well charted ‘roots’, if we have one? Clearly, life is a blessed moment of procreation and an extension of the continuous cycle of Mother Nature which rolls on over, when we know all too well, it is also a process that simply cannot be rolled back.
It is in context of looking for meanings to living, versus that of death which is as an instant, if not completely the end of reasoning, and the probabilities of a life devoid of answers to the future and where it ultimately places us, is the harrowing spectre human beings are condemned to life in his living. This premise of not knowing where ‘everything’ if ever ends is one that significantly dilates the implication and importance of NOW.
Works
Lalon composed numerous songs and poems, which describe his philosophy. Among his most popular songs are "Sob loke koy lalon ki jat songsare"
khachar bhitor auchin pakhi,
jat gelo jat gelo bole,
dekhna mon jhokmariay duniyadari,
paare loye jao amay,
milon hobe koto dine,
aar amare marishne maa,
tin pagoler holo mela, etc.
The songs of Lalon give subliminal exposures to the reality/truth that lies beyond our material plane/realism. They give a feel of the indescribable. To an engrossed listener, his songs briefly open and close a narrow passage to peep through to the other world beyond the opaque glass ceiling of this world. Lalon sublimates the findings of the principal schools of his time (a)the Nadia school initiated by 'teen pagol' ( তিন পাগল),implying Adaitacharya, Nityanando and Chaitanya. This school is different from the Achinta-vedavedbad of Lord Chaitanya (the anitonomous realism of individual soul and Supersoul, both of which eternally coexist) developed during the post-Nadiya phase of Sri Chaitanya. This latter phase has given birth to Vaishavism. Nadiya's movement is historically related to Vrindabon, but are two distinct schools. Fakir lalon Shah did not approve the re-appropriation of the popular political movement initiate by Chaitanya against caste, class and patrirachy by the upper caste elite during his time, and ultimately manifesting the decadence of the great bhokti moveet of Bengal. He always insisted on the 'Nadiya's discourse (নদিয়া'র ভাব)-- the philosophy of Nadiya's 'porimondol' (great popular circle of Nadiya.
Another major influence of Lalon is Islam. He approached and appropriated Islam from his Nadiya perspective providing fascinating interpretation of prophets and prophethood. These are done without forgetting his premises such as Jain, Buddhists and Shankhy philosophy. It was both a critique and appropriation. This phase of his discourse is generally known as 'Nobitattya' (the philosophy of wisdom.
Lalon always kept silent about his origin so that he does not get typecast into any particular religious group. He was observant of the social conditions around, and this reflects through his songs, which spoke of day to day problems, in his simple yet deeply moving language. It is said that he had composed about 10,000 songs of which 2000-3000 can be tracked down today while others are lost in time and hearts of his numerous followers. Most of his followers could not read or write and so unluckily for the lovers of Baul, very few of his songs are found in written form. Lalon had no formal education as such but his songs can educate the most educated of minds throughout the world. Long before free thinkers around the globe started thinking of a classless society, Lalon had already composed around 1000 songs on that theme.
Lalon's songs tersely refute any absolute standard of 'right and wrong', which claims to pass the test of time. His songs show the triviality of any attempt to divide people both materially or spiritually.
Legacy
Lalon's philosophical expression was based in oral and expressed in songs and musical compositions using instruments that could be made by any rural households from materials available at home: an
ektara (one-string musical instrument) and a
dugi (hand drum). The texts of the songs was explicitly written to engage in the philosophical discourses of Bengal continuing since Tantric traditions of the subcontinent, particularly Nepal, Bengal and the Gangetic plains. In Lalon critically re-appropriated the various philosophical positions emanating from the legacies of Hindu, Jaina, Buddha and Islamic traditions, developing them into a coherent discourse without falling into the mixes of being syncretic. Nevertheless he explicitly claimed his belonging to the great 'bhab'(discourse) of Nadiya—lead by 'ti pagol'(three passionate spiritual persons; thay are Chaitanya, Nityananda and Adaitacharya.
In 1963, a mausoleum and a research centre were built at the site of his shrine, the place of knowledge-practices. Thousands of people come to the shrine known in Bengali as akhra twice a year, Dol Purnima, in the month of Falgun (February to March) and in October, on the occasion of the anniversary of his death. During these three-day song melas, people, particularly fakirs (Muslim devotees) and bauls (section of Hindu believers) pay tribute to Lalon.
Among the modern singers of Baul music Fardia Parvin and Arup Rahee are known internationally for their songs of lalon.
Gallery
References
External links
Lalon Fakir: Saint Lalon by Machizo Documentary on Lalon's Life and Philosophy. (UnnayanTV)
Lyric of pabe samanye ki tar dekha in Manipuri translated by Konthoujam Suranjit
After Lalon video of a reading done by Allen Ginsberg
Farhad mazhar on Fakir Lalon Shah
http://www.chintaa.com/index.php/chinta/showAerticle/58/english
Category:Bengali musicians
Category:Bengali poets
Category:Performers of Hindu music
