Lal-Ded in Performance

Lal Ded of Kashmir: Shaivite-Sufi Poetess in Performance.

DD Kosambi in his paper titled “Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture” tells us that the habits like ‘praying to god’ are extremely primitive in their evolution. By primitive he means to say, always in relation to the discovery of bread or when the primitive human knew how to satisfy their desires and needs. He also tells us that Shaivism then grew out of these primitive an-iconic beliefs incorporating cult-stones, for some people, as a “sublimated highest god”. This icon gave way to include the buffalo horned image of the deity Mahishasura found in Mohenjo daro. Then Parvati killing Mahishasura and as Kali, Shiva’s consort, trampling the prostrated Shiva and infusing life into his lifeless body by the very same act, becomes a peculiar entity in understanding of such gendered spirituality.

From this we can now enter the realms of women in spiritual practices like those of Akka Mahadevi of the Veerashaiva cult from South India, who ran off from her husband’s house in search of her salvation by roaming freely as a naked and unclothed self. After a brief description about Akka Mahadevi’s spiritual alliance we shall move to Lal Ded, especially in relation of Shaivite philosophy, without excluding the Sufi recognition of the same. This paper will be specifically dealing with the life and times of Lal Ded, or Lalleshwari, or Lalla Arifa, or simply Lalla out of fondness, as she is variously known, a 14^th century mystic poetess from the Kashmir valley, who goes on to be accepted by both muslim and hindu followers. Along with an analytical and informative approach upon the subject of Lal Ded, this paper shall also try to look at some of the contemporary performance adaptations based on the vaakhs or saying of Lal Ded, namely by performers like Mita Vasisht- theatre practitioner, Rani Khanam- dancer(Kathak) and Inder Salim- Performance Artist.

Talking of gendered spirituality, Vijaya Ramaswamy in her book called Walking Naked-Women, Society and Spirituality in South India, mentions of Akka Mahadevi’s spiritual practice as a site for transvestism and androgyny. She reports through Bhasavana’s records of her vachana:

Look here, dear fellows:

I wear these men’s cloths

Only for you.

Sometimes I am man

Sometimes I am woman. 

Such subversion in times of when women were not even allowed to approach asceticism and monasticism under the Brahminical Hindu traditions is quite radical and much ahead of that time. For a woman, as is believed, being a truthful daughter, wife, mother, sister etc can lead her to eternal salvation, and so such forms of renunciation are not prescribed. Under such scenario, Akka Mahadevi and Kashmir’s Lal Ded walked out of an oppressive marriage and opted for an ascetic path. Both these woman saints shunned feminine modesty by walking entirely naked and breaking religious taboos. The moment Lal Ded realized the futility of a clothed self, she danced naked and sang in her very famous vaakh:

Lalla, think not of things that are without

Fix upon thy inner self thy thought

So shall thou be freed from doubt

Dance then Lalla, clad but in the sky

Air and sky, what garment is more fair?

Cloth, says custom, but does that satisfy?

In the same way, Akka Mahadevi justifies her walking naked by blatantly saying:

To the shameless girl

Wearing Mallikarjuna’s light, you fool,

Where is the need to cover and jewel?

But Vijaya Ramaswamy also tells us that although both Lalla and Akka Mahadevi renounced their marriages, still they craved for the eternal spiritual union with their rightful pati (husband), Shiva. Interestingly for Lalla, Shiva is an entity that seems to reside in her own self, not outside in any temple or stone. In another of her vaakh she clearly says:

A thousand times I asked my Guru

The name of the one who can’t be named?

The one who pervades the entire cosmos!

One who is the cause of the existence

both finite and infinite! Both inner and outer!

No response! And asking again and again I tired myself.

One also needs to highlight that the aspect of recognizing the self with the Shiva is a peculiar feature of the Trika Philosophy or Kashmir Shaivism. The followers of trika, Abhinavagupta or even Lalla advocated the merger of individual consciousness with the Universal consciousness through the medium of Yoga and Wisdom. Vijaya Ramaswamy also records an important observation that Virashaivism of South India reflects Buddhist concepts like ‘shunyata’, or the state of nothingness, through female Shaivite scholars like Bonta Devi, who is said to be a migrant from Kashmir and hence strongly influenced by Trika Philosophy.

From here, we are now in a position to examine the influence that Lalla had on her contemporary and later Sufi poets and scholars. One of Lalla’s most famous vaakh is:

Shiva is everywhere manifest

Don’t speak of Hindu or Musulman

If you are wise, know yourself.

That is the recognition of the True Friend.

Clearly she loathed the idea of religious distinctions in kashmiri society of those times. Abir Bashir Bazaz, a writer from Kashmir, and a former professor at the University of Minnesota, tells us that Nund Rishi or Shiekh Noorudin Noorani the 15^th century patron saint of Kashmir was greatly influenced by Lalla’s vaakhs and considered her as his guru.

http://kunear.com/styled-25/styled-14/

The very act of walking naked depicts immense potential as a performance. Particularly such an act by a local woman has tremendous possibility to shake the social set up, and can lead to be shunned from society. Lalla’s open resistance againt the social norms has and continues to have a magnificent effect on the current breed of artists in india, at least.

Such pervasive effect of Lalla’s poetry has inspired some artists in the field of performance to illustrate the grandiose of her philosophy through their art. One of the first that comes to mind, specifically considering Lalla’s flexible nature when it comes to religion and the rigidities in society is the work of the kashmiri Performance Artist called Inder Salim and his work titled as “From Lal Ded to Ahad Zargar”(2007). Abdul Ahad Zargar (b. 1882) of kashmir, infused both sufi and Shaivite thoughts into his own poetry. According to Inder Salim, if Lal Ded can be considered the first sufi poetess in kashmir, then Abdul Ahad Zargar, who lived more than a hundred years ago, can be proclaimed as the last sufi poet from the valley.

Taking from Lalla’s oft-quoted vaakh:

My guru gave me this one percept:
‘withdraw your gaze from without’ and focus 
On the self within. That became the turning point in Lalla’s Life
And naked I began to dance.

(Translation by Neel Kanth Kotru)

along with Zargar’s longish poem/song, from which some of the most controversial lines go like this:

I Suckled the milky breasts ( of mother )
of whom I married lawfully ( wife )
Heed not how logicians may interpret it.

(Translation by Dr. M Maroof Shah.)

Inder Salim tells us that “This performance is intended to reconnect ‘ the self’ with that history in order to discover ‘the present’ in its most chaotic form.” His performance included walking naked and stitching the verses from the poem on to his back and later distributed yellow rice, a common kashmiri practice, to the audiences.

Inder Salim Perfroming (2007)      image courtesy: www.sarai.net

(www.sarai.net)

Next we move on to look at another example of the adaptation based on Lalla’s poetry in performance. It is by the prominent theatre artist Mita Vasisht who conceived and performed Lal Ded for the first time in 2004 to the audiences of Mumbai. She mostly performed on the poetry of Lalla based on movement improvisations after she intensively trained in Kalaripaytu and Koodiyattam and devised this performance with its minimalistic features.

Mita Vasisht in Lal Ded

Finally, we look at a recent classical dance rendition by a Kathak dancer Rani Khanam dancing on the sufi verses of Lalla along with Rama Vaidyanathan who depicted, through her Bharatnatyam dance, the verses of poetess Saint Janabai. Rama Vaidyanathan, again, in Mumbai presented another choreography called Mad and Divine at Mumbai.

 

Rama Vaidyanathan in Mad and Divine

Conclusion

We  have, by now, been able to create partially a comparative observations about Akka Mahadevi in South India and Lal Ded from Kashmir. Not only is it clear now that women have been major flag bearers of spiritual bhakti movements in india but also that contemporary art practice is heavily influenced by such women. However, it it necessary to point out that, works of art from Kashmir in particular do not garner as much viewership as can, say, a work about the verses of Kabir. Lal Ded and her poetry has been kept restricted to mostly literature and Linguistics. The works stated here very few and far in between and from outside Kashmir, considering in the field of performance.