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Bhakti and the Gendered Self: A Courtesan and a Consort in Mid Nineteenth Century Punjab*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2012

ANSHU MALHOTRA
ANSHU MALHOTRA*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Delhi, Delhi 110007, India Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Bhakti is viewed as a movement that is subversive of orthodoxy, and inverts the societal norms prescribed by the dharmashastras. This paper looks at the Bhakti movement's long history and transformations into the nineteenth century in Punjab. If womanly dharma within the normative tradition is defined by sexual containment through marriage and wifehood, the accumulated Bhakti legends and hagiographies are examined to see the place of the prostitute in it, and the limits of its revolutionary potential are brought to the fore. By looking at the writings of the Muslim prostitute Piro who comes to live in the establishment of a ‘Sikh’ guru Gulab Das, in Chathianwala near Lahore during the period of Ranjit Singh, this paper attempts to read Piro's use of Bhakti legends and imagery to build support for her unusual step. The imbrication of the Gulabdasis in hybrid practices that borrowed elements from advaita, Bhakti and Sufi theologies is also delineated. The paper shows Piro's engagement with the radical potential of Bhakti, but also maps her move towards social conformity—the paradox that makes her look at herself simultaneously as a courtesan and as a consort.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 6 , November 2012 , pp. 1506 - 1539
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Kumkum Roy for encouraging me to think about the institution of prostitution. The first version of this paper was presented at the Kitabmandal session of the Center for South Asian Studies, University of Michigan, in September 2008. I thank Farina Mir, Barbara Metcalf and other participants for their comments. Jack Hawley did a careful reading of this paper during a holiday to India. He also brought a relevant document on Mirabai in Punjab to my notice, and Gurinder Singh Mann generously sent me a copy of their joint paper. I thank them both. I gratefully acknowledge the support of Furrukh Khan of the Lahore University of Management Sciences, and also of the independent scholar Iqbal Qaiser in helping organize my trip to Chathianwala in Pakistani Punjab in May 2008. Shri Vijendra Das of the Gulabdasi dera, Hansi, has enthusiastically supported my work on Piro and generously shared his materials with me. My gratitude also to the anonymous reviewers of this journal for a careful reading and helpful suggestions.

References

1 Ramanujan, A. K. (1982). ‘On Women Saints’ in Hawley, J. S. and Wulff, D. M. (eds), The Divine Consort: Radha and the Goddesses of India (Berkeley: Graduate Theological Union), pp. 316–324Google Scholar.

2 Ramanujan, A. K. (1999). ‘Is There an Indian Way of Thinking? An Informal Essay’ in Dharwadker, V. (ed.), The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 34–51Google Scholar.

3 Kumkum Sangari, for instance, argues that prescriptions of brahmanical texts were available as an ideology that was absorbed and reflected in the verses of the bhaktas. See Sangari, K. (1990). ‘Mirabai and the Spiritual Economy of Bhakti’ in two parts, Economic and Political Weekly, pp. 1464–1475, 1537–1552.

4 Died 1839.

5 For a discussion of the concept of ‘breast goddesses’ see Hawley, J. S. (1996). ‘Prologue’ in Hawley, J. S. and Wulff, D. M. (eds), Devi: Goddesses of India (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 1–28Google Scholar.

6 Died 1872.

7 The Nirmalas were a flourishing Sikh sect in nineteenth century Punjab known for their Sanskritic and Vedantic learning. Giani Gian Singh was a well-known Nirmala scholar and historian of nineteenth century Punjab. See Singh, H. (1996). (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism Vol. II, (Patiala: Punjabi University) pp. 82–83Google Scholar. The last section of his monumental Panth Prakash describes some contemporary Sikh sects. Singh, G. (1970). Sri Guru Panth Prakash (hereafter PP) (Patiala: Bhasha Vibhag Punjab), pp. 1292–1295 (first published 1880)Google Scholar.

8 Singh, G. (1926). Bharat Mat Darpan (hereafter BMD) (Amritsar: Vaidyak Bhandar), pp. 127–130Google Scholar.

9 Ibid. Ilahi Khan has been identified with Ranjit Singh's general, the gunner Ilahi Baksh. Sevak, G. I. (1984). Gulabdasi Sampradaye: Rachna ate Vichar, unpublished doctoral thesis (Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University, hereafter GNDU), p. 97. On Ilahi Baksh see Sharma, R. (2001). The Lahore Darbar (Amritsar: GNDU), pp. 92–93Google Scholar.

10 Ik Sau Sath Kafian, ms. 888, Bhai Gurdas Library (Amritsar: GNDU).

11 In Kafian she writes niwazan roze chhut gaye mastani hoi, explicating her giving up ritual fasting of the Muslims, and having become intoxicated on the teachings of her guru. Kafian Likhayate Mata Peero Kian is appended to ms. 888.

12 Malhotra, A. (2009). ‘Telling her Tale? Unravelling a Life in Conflict in Piro's Ik Sau Sath Kafian (One Hundred and Sixty Kafis)’ The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 46:1, 541–578CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Multiple terms describe a courtesan in Sanskrit literature, referring to a category of ‘skilled, articulate women’. See Roy, K. (2010), ‘Re-presenting the Courtesanal Tradition: An Exploration of Early Historical Texts’ in, The Power of Gender and the Gender of Power (Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 111–131Google Scholar.

14 For a discussion of different categories of prostitutes see Oldenburg, V. T. (ed.) (2007), ‘Afternoons in the Kothas of Lucknow’ in, Shaam-e-Awadh: Writings on Lucknow (New Delhi: Penguin Books), pp. 102–121Google Scholar.

15 This is suggested in Shahryar (1997), ‘Punjabi di Paheli Shayra: Peero Preman,’ Ajoke Shilalekh, pp. 5–8.

16 Vidyarthi, D. S. (1974). ‘Punjabi di Paheli Istri Kavi’ Khoj Darpan, 1:2, 89–95Google Scholar. Vijendra Das, who heads the Gulabdasi dera in Hansi, Haryana, has prepared a volume on Peero's works. Das, V. (2011). Sant Kavyitri Ma Peero (Panchkula: Satluj Prakashan)Google Scholar.

17 Giani Ditt Singh and Bhai Jawahar Singh, for instance, first joined the Arya Samaj and then the Singh Sabha of Lahore.

18 160 Kafis is written in six-line stanzas following a simple rhyme pattern aa-bb-cc. The kafi references from this text are indicated as [k. n].

19 Verses quoted from this text will be marked as [Kk. n]. Kafian was in a four-line stanza. Piro is credited with another siharfi beside Kafian, and also wrote a joint siharfi with Gulab Das, Siharfi Sanjhi, with each author contributing the alternative verse.

20 I have not seen the original manuscript of this text, but have relied for this paper on a transliterated (Gurmukhi to Devnagari) text prepared by Sant Vijendra Das Das, V. ‘Ath Raag Sagar Granth Mata Guru Peero Ji’ in, Sant Kavyitri, pp. 212–239.

21 Petievich, C. (2007). When Men Speak as Women: Vocal Masquerade in Indo-Muslim Poetry (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 1–30Google Scholar.

22 On the use of kafi and siharfi forms by the Sufis of Punjab see Schimmel, A. (2007). ‘Sufism in Indo-Pakistan’ in, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Delhi: Yoda Press) (first published 1975), pp. 344–402Google Scholar.

23 Piro is credited with another siharfi, and a joint siharfi with Gulab Das, Siharfi Sanjhi, with each of the authors contributing alternate verses.

24 Shah Abdul Latif of Sindh's Risalo was composed of ragas. Schimmel, ‘Sufism in Indo-Pakistan’ pp. 390–391.

25 Personal interview with Shahryar in May 2005. Shahryar worked in the GNDU library when he came across this manuscript.

26 I visited the residence of the Gulabdasi Vijendra Das in Sonepat, Haryana, to see the manuscript on 10th June 2010.

27 This is speculative as, so far, I have not come across any document that can help to date her writings.

28 PP, p. 1295.

29 On 25th May 2008 I visited Chathianwala where the elderly Mohammad Shafi Ansari recalled a fair (mela) over 8–9 days of the Gulabdasis before the partition of India.

30 On 26th May 2008 Dr Tabassum Kashmiri, a scholar in Pakistan, recalled his youth in the 1950s in Punjab. He spoke of the Nurpur mela at the Shah Char Charag Dargah, near Rawalpindi, where according to him, prostitutes (tawaifs) came from all over Pakistan and even India to participate in the proceedings. These included their dances (mujras). In her book on the prostitutes of Hira Mandi in Lahore in contemporary Pakistan, Louise Brown writes in detail of a prostitute's visit with her family to the urs of Shahbaz Qalandar to Sehwan, Sind. Brown, L. (2006). The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Pleasure District (New York: Harper Collins), pp. 95–107Google Scholar. Shahbaz Qalandar was also said to have converted prostitutes to Islam. See Dalrymple, W. (2009). ‘The Red Fairy’ in, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India (London: Bloomsbury), pp. 112–145Google Scholar.

31 D. N. Lorenzen mentions that the Kabirpanthis dispute Kabir's marriage, viewing him as a life-long celibate. However, other legends and hagiographies of Kabir see him as a married householder with wife, mother and children. See Lorenzen, D. N. (1991). Kabir Legends and Ananta-Das's Kabir Parchai (Albany: State University of New York Press), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

32 Chakravarti, U. (2006). ‘The World of Bhaktin in South Indian Traditions: The Body and Beyond’ in her Everyday Lives, Everyday Histories: Beyond the Kings and Brahmanas of ‘Ancient’ India (New Delhi: Tulika Books), pp. 275–292Google Scholar.

33 This was also the manner of some Sufi poetics and other literary genres of India, specially speaking in the voice of the virahini, the woman separated from her lover. Petievich, When Men Speak as Women.

34 See Ramanujan's discussion of saint Purandhara's wife as a ‘natural’ devotee who can perceive the presence of gods. See his ‘On Women Saints’.

35 Hawley, J. S. and Juergensmayer, M. (2008). Songs of the Saints of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 119–120 (first published 1988)Google Scholar.

36 Hawley, J. S. (2005). ‘Morality Beyond Morality’ in Three Bhakti Voices: Mirabai, Surdas and Kabir in Their Times and Ours (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 48–69Google Scholar.

37 For Kabir see Lorenzen, Kabir Legends; for Ravidas see Hawley and Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India, pp. 9–23.

38 Pinch, W. R. (1999). ‘History, Devotion and the Search for Nabhadas of Galta’, in, Ali, D. (ed.), Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 367–399Google Scholar.

39 Lorenzen, D. N. (1996). Praises to a Formless God: Nirguni Texts from North India (Albany: SUNY Press), p. 268Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., p. 263.

41 Lorenzen, Kabir Legends, pp. 29–32.

42 See Priyadas’ rendition of the tale discussed by Hawley in his ‘Morality Beyond Morality’ pp. 60–62.

43 Hawley, ‘Morality Beyond Morality’.

44 Hawley, ‘Morality Beyond Morality’ pp. 50–55.

45 Ibid.

46 Hawley, J. S. and Mann, G. S. (2008). ‘Mirabai in the Pothi Prem Ambodh’, Journal of Punjab Studies, 15:1–2, 199–223Google Scholar.

47 Hawley and Juergensmeyer, ‘Mirabai’, in, Songs of the Saints of India, pp. 132–133.

48 Singh, P. (2003). The Bhagats of the Guru Granth Sahib: Sikh Self-Definition and the Bhagat Bani (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 145–146Google Scholar.

49 Mukta, P. (1997). Upholding the Common Life: The Community of Mirabai (New Delhi: Oxford University Press)Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., pp. 49–66. For a different opinion see Sangari, ‘Mirabai and the Spiritual Economy of Bhakti’. For Sangari, Mira's verses show her having absorbed the dominant feudal and patriarchal values of her society, and that her verses often display a Mira observing herself through the harsh gaze of society. However, Sangari discusses the ‘received’ Mira, rather than the historical accretions of the Mira story.

51 Mukta, Upholding the Common Life, pp. 23–25. Yet at another level Mira's contumacy continues to be attractive. A surprising and presumably new myth is of Mira, the Rajput princess’ unswerving devotion towards the famous Sufi saint Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti of Ajmer. Abbas, S. B. (2003). The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India (Karachi: Oxford University Press), pp. 97–103Google Scholar.

52 Ramanujan, ‘Where Mirrors are Windows’ pp. 6–33.

53 Grewal, J. S. (2002). The Sikhs of the Punjab (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press). (Reprint)Google Scholar

54 McLeod, W. H. (2003). Sikhs of the Khalsa: A History of the Khalsa Rahit (Delhi: Oxford University Press)Google Scholar.

55 Singh, S. (2001). ‘Patronage of the Udasis’ in Banga, I. and Grewal, J. S. (eds.), Maharaja Ranjit Singh: The State and Society (Amritsar: GNDU), pp. 139–151Google Scholar; Singh, G. (n.d.). Nirmala Bhushan: Itihas Nirmal Bhekh (Amritsar: Mahant Hari Singh).

56 Oberoi, H. (1994). The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition (Delhi: Oxford University Press)Google Scholar.

57 Rose, H. A. (1970). A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North West Frontier Province (Patiala: Languages Department Punjab) (first published 1911), pp. 319–320Google Scholar; Bingley, A. H. (1970). Sikhs (Patiala: Languages Department), p. 91 (reprint)Google Scholar; Saunders, L. S. (1873). Report on the Revised Land Settlement Report of the Lahore Division of the Panjab 1865–69 (Lahore: Central Jail Press), pp. 53–54Google Scholar.

58 ‘Raag Asha Shabda’ in, Sant Kavyitri, p. 225.

59 See the discussion on the Ramanandis by Veer, P. V. D. (1987). ‘Taming the Ascetic: Devotionalism in an Indian Monastic Order’, Man, 22:4, 680–695CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 BMD, p. 127.

61 Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, pp. 62–67.

62 PP, p. 1294.

63 Ashok, S. S. (1988). Siharfian Sadhu Wazir Singh Kian (Patiala: Punjabi University), p. 4Google Scholar.

64 PP, p. 1293.

65 ‘Siharfi Satarvin, Kafian Sant Wazir Singh te Nurang Devi dian Sanjhian’, in, Ashok, Kafian Sadhu Wazir Singh, p. 72.

66 See Hess, L. (1987). ‘Kabir's Rough Rhetoric’ in Schomer, K. and McLeod, W. H. (eds), The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India (Delhi: Motilala Banarsidass), pp. 143–165Google Scholar.

67 ‘If god had desired to make me a Musalman, I should have been born circumcised. If a man becomes a Musalman by circumcision, what is to be done to a woman?’ Macauliffe, M. A. (1998). The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors, Vol. VI (New Delhi: Low Price Publications), p. 127 (first published 1909)Google Scholar. Also see Hess, ‘Kabir's Rough Rhetoric’.

68 Kabir has been attributed this argument—‘If putting on the thread makes you a Brahman, what does the wife put on?’, ibid.

69 Piro evinces sympathy here for the message of the first Sikh guru Nanak, preserved by the Nanakpanthis. It was the masculine and militant transmutation under Gobind Singh she critiques.

70 Singh, The Bhagats of the Guru Granth Sahib.

71 The point about these common examples of Bhakti imagery has been made. See the poem of Paltu Sahib quoted by Lorenzen for references to Ajamal and the prostitute, Singing About Saints, pp.166–167; and a Mira bhajan on Bhilni in Hawley and Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India, p. 137.

72 The reference is to the popular tale about Balmiki, a low caste dacoit, before he took to Ram bhakti. For the transformation of Valmiki from a grammarian, ascetic, and the author of Ramayana into a ‘brutish’ character under the ‘pressure of bhakti’ see Leslie, J. (2005). ‘The Implications of Bhakti for the Story of Valmiki’ in King, A. S. and Brockington, J. (eds), The Intimate Other: Love Divine in Indic Religions (Delhi: Orient Longman), pp. 54–77Google Scholar.

73 Did Piro confuse Ravidas with Pipa? Pipa is a royal in Bhakti hagiographies, and Ravidas, a leather-working Chamar.

74 Gold, D. (1989). The Lord as Guru: Hindi Sants in North Indian Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 16–17Google Scholar.

75 Ibid., p. 4.

76 The reference is to the androgynous Ardhnareshwar.

77 I have been unable to place the myth of Arain Kasaini.

78 Sangari, ‘The Spiritual Economy of Bhakti’.

79 Figure 1 shows a bejewelled Piro sitting with Guru Gulab Das on an elevated seat while the heir apparent to the gaddi, Hargobind, fans them with a flywhisk. Notice the turban with an aigrette, halo, and umbrella, the insignia of royalty, on the guru's person. A woman (prostitute?) and men perform around them.

80 PP, pp. 1295.

81 1929 is the Bikrami Samvat date that corresponds to 1872 CE.

82 This is a reference to a local legend, as the Khatri caste is mostly found in Punjab. The point again was the preference for a lower caste woman from among the dyers, to the upper caste Khatrani.

83 The reference is to Shabari, the Bhil woman.

84 ‘Hori Sorath Di’ in, Sant Kavyitri, p. 215.

85 ‘Hori Kumach Di’ in, Sant Kavyitri, p. 219.

86 The story of the demon Hiranyakashyap is associated with Vishnu who slayed him in his avatar as Narasimha, the man-lion. Karmabai was a woman devotee of the god Jagannath of Puri. She daily fed the god khichri, gruel of rice and lentils, with little concern for ritual purity, and was reprimanded by a priest. When she followed all the rules the preparation of food was delayed and god complained to his priests. Lorenzen, Praises to a Formless God, p. 266.

87 ‘Hori Kumach Di’ in, Sant Kavyitri, p. 219.