The urs of two of the greatest Punjabi poets fall in the months of sawaan and bhadon. But in the past few years, due to the incidence of ramzan, the need has been felt to shift the dates of the two urs and these will be observed in this and coming weeks. These urs and melas, even in the cities, bring a flavour of rural existence and traditions which have formed the core of our lives for thousands of years.
It is thus important also to recall and remember the Punjabi poets, their lives and works because, as it is, Punjabi has been pushed into a corner. It became a casualty of the language divide associated with religion in the run up to independence. Punjabi is an older language going back 700 years and the mother tongue of the people living in this region. It got tagged with the Sikhs since their liturgical literature is in Punjabi and they developed a script called Gurmukhi.
In the past 200 years or so in the subcontinent, the written word with its bind to citation and references has been considered more acceptable, reliable and legitimate while the oral tradition has become less authentic and therefore less valid. But the greater fund of our languages has been transmitted and communicated through oral sources or is preserved thus.
In this day and age where the written word is given scholarly precedence over the spoken word poetry, sayings, bolian, anecdotes, qissas and hikayats etc. are summarily dismissed as not worthy of consideration.
But if one looks at one’s history, oral tradition was given precedence over the written word and for centuries the oral tradition expressed the intellectual and cultural developments of the people here. Even religion was revealed in the manner of the oral tradition and it was much later that it was written down by followers. No need was felt at that time to write these revelations. The dead written word could never have replaced the vibrancy and immediacy of the sayings communicated orally.
Perhaps with the internet and cyber means of preservation, dissemination and communications, it is felt that the strict adherence to the written word as expressed through the mechanical printing presses is coming to an end. There is much that is common between the oral tradition and the cyber sources, the least being hardly any attribution to the sources. Every person enjoys the freedom of a platform to express and needn’t get into the rigmarole of quoting sources and penning citations. The ambitions, desires and wishes are treated as facts and authentic information.
And then it is a growing body of work which is being added to all the time. The oral tradition too was not static but was cumulative, treated as such by those carrying on the tradition of either narrating or reciting the works. It was a living experience that was not moribund encased in the finality of the printed word but fluid, flexible and malleable meeting the requirements of the present.
Bulleh Shah’s popularity as a poet of Punjabi has been ensured by gawaiyaas, qawwals and roving minstrels, who building upon the tradition of oral transmission, have sung his kalam to a population that far exceeds the numbers that live within the physical boundaries of his native province. In the case of Waris Shah the decision to sing/recite Heer in Bhairavi must have been taken at some point and then it must have caught on to become a standard practice. It must have been formalised over decades and then Heer in any other raag must have been considered improper.
Bhairavi was and is a very popular melodic mode in the Punjab, and has the possibility of engaging all the surs. It is not confined, though, to a certain area or a region and there are many variation of Bhairavi which are sung in various parts of the South Asia. From the tunes in Afghanistan to Sindh to Bengal, Bhairavi is a universal melodic mode that fits into whatever clothes that have been tailored according to the style and taste of the various regions of the country.
The way languages have developed, progressed and have been sidelined for most Punjabi Mussalmans (Muslims) who constitute a majority in this country Punjabi is left only as an oral language, the connection with the script largely being lost. But with technical advancements in recording and cheaper/ready accessibility to the computer software this debate about the distinction of the oral and the spoken can be put to rest.
Whatever is available in the now dying oral tradition should be immediately recorded and preserved. It is unfortunate that the diversity of accents, pronunciations, the style of narration, recitation, the enactments of the qissas and kahanis is now almost lost.
Even contemporary writing can be accompanied by recordings of oral renderings of the text, either by the poet himself, if he is alive or by scholars or traditional bards who are familiar with the text and are connected to that dying tradition. If done soon there is still probably a decent chance of reconnecting the written and the spoken word.