Viraha bhava in Sufism

BT Song 1247

I was bit surprised when I read that there is some kind of ‘viraha-bhava’ even in Islamic (poetic) literature.  About it Purushottam Agrawall says, {The Erotic to the Divine: Kabir’s notion of love and Femininity, pp. 55-82, in Kavita Panjabi, (ed.) Poetics and Politics of Sufism & Bhakti in South Asia. Love, Loss and Liberation, Hyderabad, Orient Blackswan Pvt. Ltd.}

‘Sufi philosophy attributed femininity to the divine, but not to the devotee.  The attribution of femininity to the devotee and of masculinity to the divine is a peculiarity of South Asian Sufi poetry, and scholars have taken note of the influence of Indian folk traditions and spiritual practice on this tradition….. The Sufis of Arabia conceived the divine in a female form, i.e., they took the woman to be the object of love, and thus abstracted her charm from a male point of view. However, it was from the Indian folk tradition that they learned the practice of abstracting the sexual desire of a woman in love.’ (p.64) Then he notes, ‘The uniqueness of Kabir’s notion of love is that he gives ‘nirgun Ram’ a human quality. Along with being the ‘tat saar’ (fundamental essence) of the ‘tihoon lok’, Ram is also Kabir’s own beloved—‘Raja Ram the Beloved’. In regard to this form of Ram, female Kabir expresses her feeling of sexual right or authority over Ram, acting so ‘possessive’ that (p.66):

Kabir naina antari aaw tu, jyun hon nain hhapeun

Na hon dehun aur ko na tujh dekhan deun

Kabir says, whenever I close my eyes, You come inside them.

I will not see anyone else, nor will I let You see them! (Gupta, Mata Prasad. Kabir Granthavali, Allahabad: Sahitya Bhavan, 1986:35)—pp. 66-67.

But Kabir even went to the extent of expressing desire for an explicitly sexual union.  About this Agrawall notes:

For the female Kabir, this very desire is the purpose of her very existence.  Kabir expresses devotion toward Ram in the voice of an uninhibited woman expressing desire for an explicitly sexual union:

Weh din kab awenge mai

Ja karnai hum deh dhari hai milibo ang lagai

Hon janun hilmil khelun, tan man pran samai

Ya kamna karo parpuran, samrath ho Rama rai

Ma, when will those days come,

For which we were born?  I will embrace Him,

I know that I will embrace him without inhibition, with my heart, mind, life,

Fulfil this desire, master Ram, You are he who gives strength. (Gupta 1986: 328)

And immediately after the above comes this touching, intoxicating invitation:

Balha aao hamare geh re

Tumh bin dukhiya deh re

Sab koi kahe tumhari nari mo ko ih andeh re

Ekmek ho sej na soven tab lag kaisa neh re

Beloved, come to my home,

Without you, my body pains.

Everyone calls me your woman, but I have my doubts

We haven’t slept on the marital bed after becoming one,

Until one does, how can there be love? (Gupta 1986: 328)

After reading this section, I reflected about the freedom that Indian (Hindu) tradition gives for a bhakta to express his/her devotion to his/her beloved Lord.  Though Agrawall rightly says that, ‘there are many sadhaks like him {Kabir} who never tire of condemning amorous woman in their sanskar-influence spiritual maxims, but in the realm of poetry and ‘mystical’, spiritual practice never tire of taking the form of a woman to express their poetic interpretation of love. This type of paradox, this type of inner-struggle, is indeed the evidence of a deep insight into the nature of love achieved by poets through the natural (or ‘mystical’, if you like!) process of creating poetry.(p.73).

Tamil Bhakti poems have full of such explicit expression of sexual union with the chosen deity.  As I have already mentioned them there is no need or place for it again here.  However though I too use this poetic freedom to express my relationship (bhakti) in the Lord using viraha-bhava {love in separation) still He remains in my reverence as Guru.

Revised on 14-7-2024

Gurukulam