On Fakir Lalon Shah

by Farhad Mazhar He was familiar with Hindu as well as with Muslim religion and mythology and used both freely inhis talks and songs. Thus, the Hindu god Krishna played a great role in his songs.About Lalons philosophical and mystic schoolChaitanya Mohaprabhu or Lord Sri Chaitanya was born at Nabadwip, a small village in undividedBengal and the district it belonged was known as Nadia. The present district of Kushtia where wehave Lalons shrine was indeed part of Nadia. Nabadwip means New Island that rose from the riverGanga. Lalon carried the philosophical legacies of Nadia. It is not merely a geography, anadministrative district, but the history of a unique formation where Islam in the Eastern part of Indiagrounded itself, encountered and mingled with Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions andcultural practices and generated great literary, philosophical and the cultural movement Bengalisare proud of. Nadia was the center of learning, the great place for Indian Logic, Sankhya andBaisheshik philosophy and a strong oral tradition of dissemination of knowledge. The theoretical andthe philosophical sophistication of Lalon was not surprising at all, if we remain aware of the glory of Nadia.It is said that Lalon belonged to the Nadiaschool of Vaishnavism retaining all the legacies of Bengals Tantric tradition. It is partly true, but wrong because he is also a break in the Nadia school.Broadly speaking, there were two paradigms in Vaishnavism recognised by Lalon followers: theBrindavan school and the Nadia school. They would argue that after Chaitanya, the great spiritualleader of Vaishnavism left Nadia for Brindabon leaving Nadia in charge of Nityananda, the struggleagainst caste and social hierarchies continued. Nityananda is the great Guru of Bengals tantric,bhakti and socio-political movement of the most oppressed. He was one of the trinity, in Bengalknown as tin pagol, or three mad men of Bengal, the other was Aidaitacharya. Needless to mentionthat they infused different elements in the Nadia school, but the movement took specific characterunder the leadership of Nityananda, followed by his son Birbhadra and a Muslim woman known asMadhab bibi. This is the reason why all the spiritual movements of Bengal that grew from the grassroot and articulated the voice of the subalterns, invariably refers to Nityanada as the Guru of allGurus of wisdom. Because, they claim, it is Nityananda and not Chaitanya, the great logician andmaster in linguistic and rhetoric or the great Brahmin scholar Aidaityacharya both coming from thehigher caste Brahmin family, was central to the great philosophical revolution in Bengal that startedwith Chaitanyas appearance in Nadia. Even until today any subaltern socio-spiritual movementarticulating in songs, known in Bengal as bauls or bayatis will first offer his or her song toNityananda.In contrast to Nadia, the Brindabon school appropriated the glory of Chaitanya to turn histeachings into a canonical shastra (religious discipline) of Vaishanavism. Two types of transformations took place: (a) oral to the textual the oral tradition of knowledge productionthrough songs, theatrical performances and social

mobilisation had been turned into canonical texts;(b) secondly, the religious texts were rendered lifeless, they were taken away from the popularknowledge practice and were written in Sanskrit. Brindabon is therefore a returning back to thecaste ridden Hindu tradition to become an integral part of Hinduism. Chaitanya was uplifted again tothe upper caste, this has always remained the complain of the school developed after Nityananda inNadia and culminated in the figure we now know as Fakir Lalon Shah. The Brindavan school ispopular among middle and upper classes and castes and accepted to Brahmanism. Nadia rejectedBrahmanism all along. And so did Brindabon and the profound philosophical turns in Nadia has beensystematically ignored and silenced by the educated elite of Bengal by simply referring them as LokSangeet folk songs. Fakir Lalon and others are simply known as bauls a misused and abusiveterm by the upper caste and upper class elite implying that these philosophical utterances renderedin songs should simply be treated as musical performances by some lowly rural minstrel whoresigned on life and has nothing to do in the real material world. Their musicals are overly sadovertures of some poor fellows that often break your heart!Having said this, we must also say it categorically that Lalon was not a mystic, in the sense of,lets say, Jalaluddin Rumi as a mystic. He is strongly grounded in the philosophical traditions of Bengal and one can easily make sense of him. To produce meanings of Lalons poetico-philosophicalstatements, that could also be sung, one must have some basic readings in Chaitanya teachings, anunderstanding of the difference between the Shakta and Vaishanava bhakti movements, NavyaNaya (or Bengals logical systems), Shankhya philosophy and good command over Islamicphilosophy and others.It is very difficult to talk about Tantra because of its vulgar representation and understanding inthe west: a sexual art of maximizing pleasure, which is completely opposite what Lalon would meanby it. In this exotic subcontinent there have been utterly perverse Tantric traditions that attractedthe tourists and the Orientalists, of course. The consumer capitalist society has also discovered in Tantra a spiritual or new age justification to practice all kinds of sexual perversion and packagedthem as commodities to sell in the market. Nevertheless, Tantra is a generic term and there aremany Tantras. So, responding to the enquiry Is Lalon a Tantric? the reply should depend what youmean by Tantra or Tantric? Yes Lalon is a Tantric but he is also not a Tantric as we understand Tantra. He was bitterly critical of Tantra as well, as named his practices as Karan literally

meaning practice.To make our point intelligible, Lalon was a materialist, that is what Tantra meant to him, and he issituated within the tradition of Nityananda. It means that there is no truth outside the material bodyand separation of the human body from its capacity to think is simply wrong or absurd. He woulddefinitely reject the position of Descarte and the whole of western epistemological and ontologicaltradition for its false premise I think therefore I am. He would argue that

the body is given to usbefore we even start thinking; the obsession to be certain of the existence or certainty of the truthof a statement will have to be assessed by the desire behind such impulse. There is no truth as such,we become true through the use of our body in a self determined way in the material-historicalworld this is the meaning of his Tantra for Lalon. He will also reject western materialism that beganwith weird and mystical conception of matter in order to reconstitute body and consciousness bythat category remaining eternally forgetful that all these categories are products of his or herthinking bodies.The body is the universe and the universe is the body it is the first axiomatic principle of Tantra. One can easily notice that there nothing about sex or sexuality in this basic premise. Sobody is not an individual entity but a continuum, the challenge is to taste the universe in andthrough the body as a material being, both as a means as well as the being of all knowing.To do it well one should remain healthy, must remain conscious about body and follow how thebody behaves under different conditions and how it is related to our faculties, etc. Body has sexualimpulses known in Bangla as Kam, it is natural. However, the body of the human being also has thecapacity to transform kam into prem that is love, love for others. In human bodies Kam andPrem is mixed together like poison and nectar. It is the task of the wise person to extract the nectarfrom the poison. One cannot taste love without the material impulse of the body, but lovetranscends the body and it happens only in the case of human bodies and that is his point.Lalon was not a Sufi at all. Sufi traditions do not have the same ontological or epistemologicalpremise as Lalon, more so, since Lalon was never theological. Sufis, being a spiritual movementoriginated within Islam, can not but accept the existence of Allah before any other being. In love of Allah Sufis desire to be reunited with the Being of all beings. In contrast Lalon will never assume aBeing outside the given body of human beings. Allah is right here in the human shape to knowand taste himself, Lalon would argue.Allah Ke bujhe tomar opar LileTumi Apni Allah dako Allah boleO Allah who could decipher your endless playYou are the Allah but calling for Allah yourself Allah is what human beings experiences in their thinking bodies and calling out for that being intheir language and theologies.He is misunderstood as Sufi because his songs are replete with Arabic words and Islamicmetaphors. However, careful readings reveal that he not only criticised and distanced himself fromSufis, but offered a quite original interpretation of the meaning of prophethood and the spiritualmission of Islam to rediscover Allah in the human body. He never deviated from the Nadia School,but encountered and absorbed the great Sufi traditions as well as Islamic philosophy resolving thequestions raised by those traditions within his system of thought.Nevertheless Sufis were his close allies. He never undermined the spiritual strength of Islam andone is simply astonished to note how the converging and often conflicting trends are being resolvedand absorbed by him. He wrote plenty of songs for Mohammed and similarly plenty for Chaitanyaand Nityananda. His songs interpret the philosophical meaning of Chaitnaya over and above theappearance of a historical figure. These are known as songs deciphering Gourtattya. Similarly, heinterpreted in Nabitattya the meaning of the arrival of the last prophet,

explained the significanceof the prophethood of Muhammed, the messenger of Islam. Through these songs he brilliantlypositioned himself as the great philosopher explaining the idea of the wise and the wisdom andthe necessity in every epoch of the arrival of a Guru the wisest of the wise who in flesh andblood must reinterpret all texts and utterances that went before her or him to remind the humanbeings their mission of becoming true through their socio-historical role to emancipation.It is profoundly important to understand Lalon within the Nadia tradition or as the apex of thephilosophical schools within Nadia Parimandal (circle of Nadia) and not as Sufi tradition, despite thefact that Sufis are allies to Nadia, otherwise one could completely miss the contribution of Lalon tophilosophical discourse. Let me try to make this point clearer.Lets go back to Chaitanya. Chaitanya did not want to become a Brahmacharya (a celibate). Hewas married. He accepted celibacy only after he decided to become a Sanyashi (determination togive up all worldly affairs). He is one of the famous Indian logicians. But in the day to day rhetoricwith his wife his intelligent philosophical mind concluded that the neither Logic nor rhetoric is theway to truth; in the same degree intellectualism is not the ideal human practice to become true.Chaitnayas philosophy is based on the love story of Krishna and Radha. Chaitanya started to claimthat when Krishna as a man made love with Radha he tasted the body as a masculine being. Buthow did Radha the feminine taste Krishna? How did Radha feel the body? Taste here is used in a

very literal and sensuous way but at the same time in a highly philosophical sense. The actualBangla word is ashwadon. In the western philosophy taste as faculty of knowledge has hardly anyrole and pathetically undermined in the hierarchy of senses.But Chaitanya, biologically is a man. Is it possible for the man to taste the body as a woman does?Chaitanya claimed yes it is possible and thus he made the first philosophical revolution in the historyof Tantra. To Tantra or to the prechaitanya Tantric tradition body is material in the sense of materialism in the western sense. Chaitanya said, when you do not see your lover and physicallyfeel the loss the feeling, the imagination of the loss of the lover, the imaginary pain of the heartare at the same time the pains of the body. What Chaitanya was arriving at is the role of imaginationin human history.Imagination is real, and human beings can transcend the body by imagining himself as woman.Femininity can not be locked in the biology. Chaitanya transformed his bodily desires as the desireof Radha for Krishna. But neither Radha nor Krishna are real beings. Desiring the imaginary as theobject of sensuous love opened up a new philosophical horizon is the great philosophical revolutionin Bengal. Chaitanyas practice is both a practice of the body as well as the imagination. He used tobe called Gour or Gora meaning fair. He was very handsome and very attractive. The legend goesthat through his practice he incarnated both Krishna and Radha in his body. Philosophically it impliesthat imagination can take material form and human history can not be

explained without takingaccount of the human dreams and imaginations, including revolutionary or radical departures.Lalon accepted Chaitanya but with a reservation. He realised that Chaitanya brought the desire forthe imaginary non-being of loveobject at the center of human objective and this unfolded theimmense possibility of the human body. However, in his songs he argued, Chaitanya must also beunderstood in epistemological terms and not simply as a metaphor, e.g. incarnation of Krishna.So he metaphorically raised the first brilliant question. If Chaitanya is the incarnation of Krishna, why is he not black? Why is he fair? In Bangla Krishna means black. Well becauseChaitanya is both Krishna and Radha in one body, he is both male and female. If so, why did Krishnare-incarnate again in Bengal? The reply from Lalon is that he had three incomplete tasks. What werethese tasks? One could decipher the tasks from the activities of Chaitanya.1. To destroy the dominance of male or masculine principle and erase the gender divide, biologyshould not be the determinant of our desire for the good life or should not be the hindrance foremancipatory imaginations.2. To develop the will to transcend worldly affairs, to cultivate authentic human desires; implyingto do away with the ego and the private property.3. To transform the personal love into universal love for all and to be a self conscious slave to thecommunity (all nonBrahmanical desires).I am interpreting his famous song, moner katha bolbo kare ami moner katha bolbo kare / mon jane ar jane maram mojechi mon diye jare' Based on an interview by Prof Maria Mies with Farhad Mazhar in Dhaka on January 28, 2004