Songs of Love with One Discordant Note

Different corners of the city of Lucknow resonate these days with songs of love.

The Waris brothers came here to recite qawwalis, or words of love from human beings for their creator before a large audience of students at the city’s prestigious La Martiniere College. The mystical event took place against the recently renovated mausoleum of Boulogne Lisa, or Gori Bibi, the favourite companion of Claude Martin, a French adventurer turned educationist who made Lucknow his home in the 18th century.

Carlyle McFarland, principal compared Gori Bibi's mausoleum to the Taj Mahal simply because both were built to immortalise love. McFarland organised the concert in support with SPIC MACAY, a society for the promotion of Indian classical music and culture amongst youth since 1977. The idea is to enrich the quality of formal education of students by increasing awareness and appreciation of different aspects of Indian heritage.

A few kilometers outside Lucknow, the mausoleum of Haji Waris Ali Shah in Dewa, Barabanki too resounds these days with the music of love, that according to mystics is the eternal order of the universe. Free of their agricultural duties, peasants from far and wide congregate annually at Dewa on the death anniversary of Waris Shah who is revered by devotees practicing different religions and belonging to different social and ethnic groups.

Waris Shah is buried where he had lived in Dewa till 1905, a place now identified with a beautiful monument designed in a blend of Indo-Iranian style and a place of communal harmony, universal brotherhood and equality amongst all human beings. The facade follows the Hindu style of architecture and the minarets are Persian in style.

Both Hindus, Muslims and a horde of other human beings love Waris Shah because during his lifetime all that the mystic did was to shower love upon who ever had crossed his path.

For the same reason devotees have built a mausoleum to the memory of this eternal lover and studded it with a silver plated spire donated by Raja Udit Narain Singh of Ram Nagar. The silver sheets covering the doors have come from the rulers of Kashmir and the marble flooring is paid for by Thakur Pancham Singh of Mainpuri who also supports the free kitchen operated during the festivities held this time of the year, that include prayers, a hectic sale of food and flowers and night long qawwali performances.

Taking advantage of the large crowds, cattle owners market different species of animals here and there is a wondrous exhibition of agricultural equipments and a variety of fertilizers all of which is a matter of great interest to people irrespective of the religion they practice.

Similarly the burial site of vocalist Begum Akhtar came alive recently when Shubha Mudgal came here to captivate listeners with lyrics sung in praise of the river Ganga and the beauty of Lord Krishna.

Tom Alter came all the way from Mumbai to dim the electric bulb and to light two candles here. With Uday Chandra playing a string instrument by his side, Tom recited in the flickering light alternatively and sometimes simultaneously Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan and Mir Taqi Mir in Urdu and in English, in words and in music.

However in another corner of the city BJP politician Subramanian Swamy too came as if to blow hard at the candle of the composite culture practiced every day by ordinary citizens of this city, whose lives are glowing examples of how to live and let live.

Swamy came here to tell a youth forum that the DNA of Muslims and Hindus is the same since there were no Muslims but only Hindus 800 years ago. Swamy urges Muslims to give up the demand for mosques in Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura since they stand on temples. He would like young Indians to know as much about the Vijaynagaram kingdom that existed for 300 years as about Mughal emperors.

So far so good!

No quarrel with that!

But young Indians may also like to know that 1500 years ago there were no Muslims anywhere in the world. About 2000 years ago there were no Christians. Before 2500 years ago Buddhists and Jains did not exist and perhaps 5000 years ago there were no Hindus on the planet!

To take this very enlightening argument further some million years ago probably no human beings lived on earth, begging Mars to share with it the first drop of a living organism?

The question is, so what?

Now that all of us are here, tell me what are we going to do about it?