Relevance of Kabir

Timeless Traditions

What does that mean? As the programme began, the stage brightened up by the entry of a very confident and imposing figure – Shabnam Virmani. Accompanying her were a bunch of very lively co-artistes. Yes.

They started rendering Kabir bhajans in the totally unusual style of folk music, not before Shabnam gave a very inspiring intro to the programme and her pet project about Kabir Das, the legendary folk composer and poet belonging to the bhakti cult. Shabnam’s voice, along with the equally majestic voice of her co-singer Namrata, filled the entire space above me and transferred me to another world.

Why this sudden obsession with Kabir? The gory Gujarat communal riots that followed the infamous Godhra incident made Shabnam think seriously. “I was a helpless witness to the riots, as I was then in Ahmedabad. I was shocked and moved. I set out on a journey exploring Kabir Das, who was known to have composed hundreds of couplets taking man to a spiritual level above all these plain politics. He is widely sung by Hindus and Muslims alike,” says Shabnam.

Shabnam started out as a very serious journalist as a sub-editor with a newspaper in Jaipur in 1987. Within a short span time, she earned a lot of fame when she wrote about young widow Roop Kanwar, who committed sati in Rajasthan. Her shocking coverage was one of the triggers to a vibrant women’s movement that resulted in the ban of sati and opened a new leaf in the Women’s Liberation Movement of India.

Shabnam has always been passionate about the issues that bother women and she could not restrict her expression to just writing, as she felt the visual media to be much more effective. “Desk job was stultifying,” says she, and hence she quit journalism.

Shabnam won a scholarship to pursue her Master’s in Development Communication at the famous Cornell University, USA, where she first tried her hand at film-making. She first shot a 20-minute student film, Have a Nice Day, which was her personal narrative of her alienation as an Indian student trying to come to terms with the North American culture.

When she returned after her Master’s, she toned up her film-making skills and then there was no looking back. She made a series of inspiring films about the struggles and dignity of rural women of India like When Women Unite – the story of the successful anti-liquor movement of the women of rural Andhra Pradesh, Tu Zinda Hai – a movie about the successful women activists of Madhya Pradesh, and many other one-minute documentaries, all of which have been widely telecast on many television channels.

Besides, she has directed several award-winning documentaries and radio programmes in close partnership with grassroots-level women’s groups in rural India. She is the co-founder of the Drishti Media, Arts and Human Rights Collective in Ahmedabad.
“On being a mute witness to the carnage in Gujarat, I felt Kabir calling out, ‘Sadho, dekho jag baurana’ (Oh seekers, see the world’s gone mad!), as if expressing what I then felt.”

Shabnam thus started the Kabir Project in 2002, when she was invited as the Artist in Residene at the Shrishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore and from 2003, she set out with her camera, venturing into diverse socio-cultural, religious and musical landscapes, meeting people who sing, love, quote, revere and make meaning of Kabir. She travelled across the interiors of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and even a few villages of Pakistan, and the result of her quest are a set of beautiful documentaries — Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein, Koi Sunta Hai, Chalo Hamara Des and Had-Anhad (about Kabir Das) — and a number of music CDs and books of poetry.

What inspired Shabnam to make these documentaries is the rich oral tradition which has been kept alive to this day by some people. “I realised there was not just one Kabir, but many. Each region has adopted him in its own way, adding its own flavour by way of the local dialect, accent and style. I was inspired by the gutsy folk style of rendering the bhajans and I thus started learning music under various gurus like Prahlad Tipanya,” says Shabnam.

The documentaries are a record of many splendid followers and renderers of Kabir bhajans, from ordinary street vendors, bus passengers and village folk singers to highly acclaimed classical and folk/sufi singers like Kumar Gandharv, Shuba Mudgal, Vidya Rao, Mukthiar Ali, Prahlad Tipanya and many more. It is astounding to see even ordinary people talk about the abstract philosophies contained in Kabir couplets with ease. The films have also dwelt in detail about the opinions and thoughts of various saints, preachers and god-men of the Kabir sect, as also the various practices of this sect in an unbiased manner.

Chalo Hamara Des is a very interesting coverage of the work of a Western translator and scholar Lynda Hess, who spent three years in Varanasi, translating the bijak of Kabir into English, and spent the last decade studying the oral traditions of Kabir amongst his followers in Malwa, Madhya Pradesh.

“The simple style of rendering deep abstract philosophical truths is what attracted me to Kabir. His poetry is beyond the barriers of religion, caste and geography. Many of his couplets are relevant even to this day and contemporising them to suit today’s generation is our aim under Kabir project,” says Shabnam.

The Kabir Project is working on various ways in which Kabir, and now the Sindhi Sufi poet Shah Latif, can be introduced to school and college students to silently spread the message of brotherhood and peace. Her group conducts workshops for students, arranges for direct dialogues between Kabir singers and students, and also unfolds the various facets of Kabir’s poetry. It runs the Rural Support Programme in Malwa region in partnership with folk singers and a local NGO as a part of its motive to strengthen the folk traditions of Kabir in rural areas.

Her concern for women is also seen in her documentaries. One of her films also captures many bold comments about communal amity. Will they not cause trouble?

“A mature democracy should give an open forum for free and frank discussion. People as such are not immature or impulsive. We should not suppress the expressions of people in the name of ‘hurting people’s sentiments’.

Film makers, writers and journalists should know the decent limits of their freedom. Being maliciously provocative is definitely wrong, but being honest is not wrong. Everybody should be mature enough to receive criticism also,” says this mother of a teenager who is busy travelling across the country in her endeavour to direct the younger generation towards peace and harmony.