bulleh shah

Hazrat Baba Bulleh Shah Sarkar R.A is believed to have been born in 1680, in the small village of Uch, Bahawalpur, Punjab, in present day Pakistan where his father, Shah Muhammad Darwaish, was a Paish Imam (prayer leading person) and teacher. Due to unknown reasons Shah Darwaish had to move to Malakwal, a village in Sahiwal. Later, when Bulleh Shah was six years old, his family moved to Pandoke, which is 50 miles southeast of Kasur. Bulleh Shah was schooled by his father, along with the other children of the village. Most episodes confirm that Bulleh Shah had to work as a child and adolescent herder in the village. Details of his education at Maulana Mohiyuddin's reputed madrassa are less known but it is confirmed that he received his higher education in Kasur. Some historians claim that Bulleh Shah received his education at a highly reputed madrassa run by Hafiz Ghulam Murtaza where he taught for sometime after his graduation. He probably got into higher education the way many talented individuals have done from antiquity to this day.

There is agreement between most historians that Bulleh Shah was the son of a Paish Imam who was struggling to make ends meet and was bumping from one village to the next. Village Paish Imams were considered in the category of other artisans like carpenters and potters, and they were paid in kind at the crop harvest. They were also paid for performing nikah (marriage prayers) and wielded a little more respect than other artisans, because they may have taught all the adults of the community. Bulleh Shah's herding at a very young age shows that the family was struggling to survive and had to put its young to work. There are many miracles attached to Bulleh Shah's herding period and the way he put back a crop plundered by animals. But such childhood stories are common for all sages, and sometimes they are identical. Often, devotees and superficial commentators create such stories to belittle the human efforts that these sages undertook to accomplish distinction.

However, Bulleh Shah's herding is undeniable from all written accounts. Besides feeling the pain of poverty, Bulleh Shah must have experienced class/caste stratification at a very young age. It is interesting that two of the great Punjabi classical poets, Baba Farid and Bulleh Shah, were born to poor village Paish Imam families, went through difficult economic circumstances but educated themselves at the highest level.

After having accomplished his scholastic learning Bulleh Shah, like his predecessors, faced the question of epistemology (theory of knowledge) of learning. The question was and is: how and why is knowledge gained? Sultan Bahu had categorized the knowledge through religious madrassas as a marketable commodity used to charm the rulers and mislead the people. For him the real knowledge expands your inner-self and helps you to relate to humanity, nature and the whole universe. Bulleh Shah was sharper in negating the knowledge gained for religious and other establishment-friendly purposes:

Ikko alaf tere darkar/ Ilmoon bas kareen o yar (Only Alaf is required/ Stop acquiring worldly knowledge)

Bulleh Shah goes into details of how knowledge is used by various levels of the religious establishment and how it makes them degenerates and compares them with Satan who was the most learned angel of God but went against God's will. For Bulleh Shah real knowledge came from history and real-life experiences. In another Kafi, he points out that he has acquired the understanding of the world from the course of history where anarchy shows the naked realities hidden under the ongoing status quo. For example in the following Kafi he predicates his understanding of the reality of socio-economic relations within society and how they can be put upside down with the change of time:

Times have gone upside down/ That is how I discovered the secret of love/ The crows are killing eagles/ The sparrows have put hunting birds down/ The blanket [wearing] people have become kings/ The kings are made to beg/ Bullah, this is the dictation from the Supreme/ Who can stop it?

For Bulleh Shah taking an Arain as his Murshid was an act of declassing, or surrendering his ego and negating the ingrained caste system

In another Kafi, depicting the triumph of economic greed even over sacred relationships, he says: " Dhee maan noon lut ke le gai" (The daughter got away robbing her mother). Bulleh Shah comes very close to basing human consciousness on material conditions. In a Kafi, he states " Mati qudam kraindi o yar" (O my friend, it is soil that takes every human and non-human shapes). And he finished the Kafi by saying that, in the end, the soil goes back to soil and he thus dismisses the metaphysical concepts of life hereafter. 

Within the confines of "dictations from the Supreme" or history, real knowledge leads one to relate to humanity, nature and the universe. This goal can be achieved only through first surrendering your ego in front of your Murshid and fall in deep love with this relationship: " Jad main sabq ishq da paRhia/Daryia waikh wahdat de waRiya/Ghuman Gharian de vich aRia/ Shah Inayat laiya par." (When I learned the lesson of love/I entered the river of unity/I was trapped in whirlwinds/ Shah Inayat helped me to get across.)

As the last line of the Kafi indicates, Bulleh Shah became a follower of Sufi Shah Inayat Qadiri, who was a member of the Arain tribe of Lahore. Bulleh Shah's choice of an Arain preceptor-Arains are considered much lower in the caste trajectory of the subcontinent- must have been taken as degrading for the family. There is a verse in which his family women shame him for taking an Arain as his Guru:

'Sisters and sister-in-laws came to Bullha to make him understand/You have put a dirty spot on the family name.' In response Bulleh Shah is said to have written: 'The person who calls me Syed will go to hell/If someone calls me Arain, he/she will have a place in paradise.'