secularism and synthesis in the poetry of Kabir

by Guest Sun Apr 08, 2012 1:18 am

From Vinay Dharwadker's book 'Kabir: The Weaver's Songs':

This is the secularism of the Kabir poets--but it is paradoxically a 'theological secularism'. In the modern period, we have come to view secularism as historically and conceptually possessing four basic orientations:
(a) a non-religious disposition...
(b) an a-religious disposition...
(c) an anti-religious disposition...
(d) a post-religious disposition...

Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, however, the Kabir poets invented an astonishing fifth alternative. In the dissident conception of the secular, institutionalized religions--with their wealth, power, mediating structures and violent practices--determined what constitutes 'religion' and what is legitimately 'religious' in the human world...[They] stand outside the immense scaffolding of organized human religions and what they define as 'religious' doctrine and practice, and since the 'secular' is that which lies outside the the scope of the 'religious', God as such is entirely secular.

The consequence of this conception is that the process of attaining mukti...is also a secular process. It is precisely such a secularism that makes both God and mukti completely accessible to anyone and everyone, regardless of caste, class, birth, gender, upbringing, status or rank, and that becomes indistinguishable from the deeply subversive egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism of the Kabir community.

by Guest Sun Apr 08, 2012 1:22 am

The following poem of Kabir (given in Dharwadker's book) illustrates the kind of secularism and synthesis which Kabir articulates in his poetry:

Allah-and-Rama
by Kabir

If Khuda inhabits the mosque,
then whose play-field is the rest of the world?

If Rama lives in the idol at the pilgrim-station,
then who controls the chaos outside?

The east is Hari's domicile, they say,
the west is Allah's dwelling place.

Look into your heart, your very heart:
that's where Karim-and-Rama reside.

All the women and men ever born
are nothing but Your embodied forms:

Kabir's a child of Allah-and-Rama,
They're his Guru-and-Pir.

secularism and synthesis in the poetry of Kabir

secularism and synthesis in the poetry of Kabir

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