Habba Khatoon
Philomela
of
Medieval Kashmir
by Prof. K. N. Dhar
The cultural heritage of Kashmir is as rich as it is
varied. This mental child of 'Kashyapa' has been
the recipient of fondest love and bountiful
benevolence from Nature and has consequently
enthralled the whole world by its superb physical
charm from times immemorial. To crown all, this
physical grandeur has been very usefully groomed
by Kashmiris in weaving the rainbow. Coloured
texture of mental and spiritual attainments. In
many respects they have been pioneers in evolving
a cult of philosophy in tune with their
environment and called it as 'Shaivism'. A galaxy
of rhetoricians have taken pains in prescribing
norms and standards for making the literature in
general and poetry in particular more acceptable
and representative. To say squarely, not a single
branch of literature has been left out by these
savants without their impress and alchemic touch.
Not only this, Kashmir
has been the testing-ground of three universal
religions of the world-Hinduism, Buddhism and
Islam. The traits of all these religions have
fused into the attitude of a Kashmiri like milk
and candy; and it is no surprise that though
bearing Hindu or Muslim or even Buddhist names, a
Kashmiti even to-day in actual practice is a
living embodiment of Buddhist compassion, Hindu
tolerance and Muslim zest for life. Therefore with
such a Catholic background, secularism to a
Kashiniri is not a political expedient but an
article of faith ingrained in his blood from the
hoary times to the present day. 'Kalhana' in his
monumental History of Kashmir 'River of Kings' has
not mentioned even one Communal trouble between
the Buddhists and the Hindus when a voracious race
was in progress between their respective adherents
to make theire own tenets popular and thus steal
march over other faiths. In contrast to this,
Buddhist Kings have donated large sums for the
erection of Hindu temples and shrines and vice
versa. Religious battles have always been fought
here on paper, in a more rational way, or through
dialogues which never left bad taste in the
mouths. During the Islamic period Sultan
Zain-ul-ab-Din Badshah in an admirable way and
forsooth like a Kashmiri to his marrow renovated
demolished Hindu places of worship and even
started 'Langars' at Places of pilgrimages for
feeding the hungry and the devout. 'ShriVara' in
his 'ZainaTarangini' has mentioned such 'Satr' or
Langars, one of which was located at the foot of
Mahadeva mountain.
In this way, when in the
14th-15th century an alien culture knocked at the
mountain-doors of Kashmir for being shown in, the
values cherished by Kashmiris all along had
already prepared a hospitable ground for its happy
welcome. The puritanic prosletyzing tenacity of
Islam in the absence of any mentionable reaction
on the part of Kashmiris compellingly changed to
more logical and rational methods. In this
political and religious upheaval, long-cherished
secular outlook of the faith of the people would
have received a jolt, but at this juncture
literature came to our succour.
At the confluence of
Hindu and Muslim cultures 'Laileshwari' or 'Lalla-
Deda' stands like a collossus beckoning people to
eschew differences of colour, creed or faith and
yoke themselves to attain Identity with Him-- the
All-pervasive Transcendental Force called God as
such, Therein all are equal, the worldly
appellations drop down like slough from a snake.
The pursuit of mundane is an exercise in futility;
Therefore the goal should be beyond
mundane-materiality; It is no use counting
mile-posts of material gains or losses and getting
lost in its maze; the eye should be on the
destination-- the real and permanent.
For reasons obvious, the
social fibre of the Kashmiris was also undergoing
transformation at that time and the present could
not have been in any way palatable to the denizens
of Kashmir at large; so like an awake artist 'Lalla'
dismissed the present as trash and ushered in
spirituality in its all shades 'Being' was
replaced by 'to be'. By borrowing sweetness from
the 'unknown' 'Lalla' virtually transformed the
frustration or people into the hope to live with
ever -appetising gusto. 'Lalla' could not help
striking a happy compromise between Kashmiri
shaivism and Islamic sufism. It was in tune with
the times. To quote Dr. Sufi 'Even long before the
formal conversion to Islam, Islamic sufism had
already entered tho valley." Cultural
conquest is always a pre-requisite to any other
kind of conquest. A Kashmiri by nature tolerant
and catholic kept his windows open for inhaling
the fresh air of sufism. He even assimilated and
owned much of it what was good and rejuvenvating.
But, by the time Habba
Khatoon's inebriating imagination began to find
words, this climate of spirituality and mental
drill had become suffocating and even stale in the
context of fast changing economic conditions and
human values; emphasis on individnal instead of on
the society had become the accepted norm of public
relations and thinking. The extrovert attitude
yielded place to introspection. So, the poet in
these changed environs harnessed his imaginative
faculty to interpret his or her own feelings;
Hence, Habba at the very outset of her poetic
career rebelled against the prevalent standards of
poetry-writing. Textbook idealism is not found in
the dictionary of her pulsating emotions. She did
not also try to bridge the distance between the
ideal and the real. Her substantial contribution
in this domain is to interpret her life as it was
and not what it should be. Total absence of
didactic content in her poetry (what ever is
available to us) lends support to our belief, that
she always believed in translating her feelings
without any redundant appendages of ideal,
faithfully and with sincerity of purpose. Her
poetry consequently is a happy blend of sweetness
and pathos. She has preferred to live in the
present, past was beyond her reach and future out
of her comprehension.
Kashmiri nation at that
time was groaning under internal exploitation and
external aggression. The last indigenous ruler of
Kashmir Yusaf Shah Chak personified in himself
levity and depravation in every sense of the word.
"His own Subjects being fed up with his
way-ward conduct had to invite the mughals to get
rid of such an incapable and debauche ruler,"
Writes Dr. Sufi in his 'Kasheer'. His regal writ
could not run outside his palace where passion and
carnality were reigning supreme. This trait of
inviting aliens to redress their troubles is not
new to Kashmiri character at all. Kalhana has
alluded to this many times when the natives
falling foul with their rulers invited the
neighboring Kings of Lohara (Lorin) and Parantosa
(Poonch) to sit on the throne of Kashmir. The
great queen 'Dida' herself belonged to Lorin and
installed her brother Jayasimha as the king of
Kashmir just before her death. So, the Mughals who
had vulturous eyes on Kashmir already, but their
incursions bad been thwarted by Kashmiri twice
before, exploited such a situation to their fill.
This was a welcome addition to their diplomatic
bag of conquests. Yusuf Shah at last awoke to find
his own people arrayed against him. The Mughals
arrested him and forced him to live a life of
solitary confinement at a remote village in Bihar
outside Kashmir, where he ate his heart away in
sole distress and breathed his last. It has been
contended by some overzealous Kashmiris lately
that uprising of Yusuf Shah against the Mughals
symbolized the urge of Kashmiris to fight external
domination. Unfortunately, the contemporary
historical evidence of this period does not, in
any way, confirm this view, however laudable it
may seem to be.
Moreover, the famine of
1576 A.D. due to the untimely snowfall multiplied
the miseries of the people. The devastating
effects of this unprecedented famine persisted for
full three years and Kashmiris passed their days
on starvation level more or less. To this injury
insult in the shape of 'Shia-Sunni' troubles was
added. Sectarianism became pronounced and it let
loose all the evils which nurture and sustain it.
In such a disappoioting state of affairs, the poet
naturally has to close his eyes against all that
is happening around and in self-deceit revels in
the fanciful panorama of his heart. Habba could
not afford to be an exception to this Universal
truth. Hence her love-poems do breathe an
atmosphere of total self-absorption being blind
and deaf to the environmental vissicitudes. These
may well be labelled as throbbing vibrations of
self-immersion but not self forgetfulness. Her ego
is always pronounced in each line of her verse.
Unfortunately for us we
are actually at sea about the life of this
Nightingale of Kashmir. No authoritative
contemporary record has been unearthed so far to
test the veracity of the popular tradition which
associates Habba with Yusuf Shah Chak. Moreover,
we have no hesitation in doubting the credence of
the contemporary records as the History writing
even to-day is not free from strings of pressures
and pulls. During the rule of the English the
events of 1857 have been mentioned as Mutiny, and
those very events under the Indian rule have been
treated as war of Independence; A dispassionate
account of historical events devoid of personal
projections is rare even to-day when every man
proclaims that he is free and has been given every
opportunity for independent thinking and
expression of opinion thereof. In those hoary
days, when history was compiled at the behest of
the king, perhaps in proportion to the munificence
the ruler lavished on such mercenaries, distortion
of historical facts has always come in handy for
the rating clique and its sycophants. In the same
way, there is a thin line between aggression and
liberation; In such a dilemma the verdict of
people should have been the guiding principle for
us all, but wherefrom it is to be made available?
Moreover, the evidence of
the historical data which is still in manuscript
form and has not undergone the acid test of public
opinion cannot be relied upon. In Kashmir even
to-day people who enjoy leisure and have aptitude
are given to record their own experiences in which
casual references to rulers have also been made in
Sanskrit, Persian or Urdu; but for reasons obvious
these cannot be termed as histories as such.
Perhaps every Kashmiri house-hold having
mentionable literary background of any order can
boast of such perional record. By no stretch of
imagination these can be treated as historical
evidence worth quoting. Therefore, the chronicles
written to order or as a product of personal
caprice have no place in literary or purely
historical criticism, Kalhana has not mentioned
the great Shaiva philosopher Abhinavagupta even
once. Does it follow from it that Abhinavagupta
was not a historical personality at all?
In the face of such
scanty historical material at our disposal, we
have perforee to fall back upon the popular
tradition which in unequivocal and unambiguous
terms has all long associated Habba with Yusuf
Shah. In the reconstruction of histories of
literature the tradition has played no mean part.
This kind of unbroken evidence casnot be dismissed
as cheap and unreliable altogether. The tradition
passes from generation to generation by word of
mouth. If in literary criticism this had not been
taken cognizance of, then the religious lore of
entire humanity would pass on as forged; Actually
the case is reverse of it. Tradition has all along
held the vedas, the Bible and the Koran as the
most respected and the most genuine of all the
available literature that has come down to us by
the word of mouth. Tradition embraces in its ambit
the force of public opinion which cannot be
disregarded at any cost. Public opinion in its
turn breeds sentimental attachment, and this sort
of living testimony is far superior to other media
of evidence. Perhaps this irresistible public
opinion forced the later Persian chroniclers to
make a mention of Habba though two centuries or
more after her death. The reasons for maintaining
Sphinx-like silence regarding 'Habba' by the
contemporary chronilcers may be attributed to the
aversion Sunni scholars bad for the wayward
behaviour of a sunni girl in consenting to become
a 'Keep" to Shia Yusuf Shah. The Shias on the
contrary did not like to tarnish the image of the
shia king Yusuf by making a mention of his
licentious disposition towards Habba. The Hindu
Historian could not afford to offend these both
sects hence sat on the fence. Therefore, instead
of adopting an iconoclastic attitude a critic
should own a positive outlook and respect the
tradition and the sentiments of people from which
he cannot alienate himself. Later skt chroniclers
i.e JonaRaja or Shrivara have not mentioned 'Lalla'
at all though being her contemporaries, yet the
popular tradition has had her day in as much as 'Lalla'
lives before our mental eyes even to-day.
Historicity in ordinary and unsophisticated
parlance connotes systematisation of facts,
values, tradition and outlook. Therefore, the role
of tradition can in no way be under estimated.
When the dust of such
controvercy had settled down, Birbal Kachru and
Hassan Khohyami, the first chroniclers in this
field, thought it fit to mention her by name. Both
these historians have given an account of 'Habba'
though in a slip-shod manner; but piecing the
incidents together we can build her personality
without any fear of contradiction or historical
irrelevance. According to them "Habba"
was the scion of a well-to-do peasant family
living at Chandrahara, a village near the famous
Saffron fields of Pampur. She had been married to
Aziz Lone one of her collaterals. The proverbial
animosity between the mother-in-law and the
daughter-in-law dampened the marital relations
between Habba and her spouse. She was forced to
live with her parents. 'Habba' at such a tender
and impressionably age could not recover from the
rebuff she received at the very threshold of her
conjugal life. Her despondency flowed out in the
form of poetry pulsating with unartificial fusion
of sound and sense. He fame reached the amorous
ears of Yusuf Shah, who admitted her to his harem
as a 'Keep', and did not allow her the status of a
queen. Both the chroniclers are punctillious about
using the phrase "sharing the same bed,"
about her.
Further, Mohammed Din 'Fauq'
and Abdul Ahad Azad have provided us with her
actual name 'Zoon', as faultless as the moon.
Mahjoor has also accepted this name without a
murmur. 'Habba Khatoon' presumably a more
respectable mode of address than 'Zoon' must have
been bestowed upon her when she joined the harem
of Yusuf Sbab in keeping with the royal ettiquette.
There should be no surprise, or eybrows need not
be raised when a Kashmiri lady is supposed to have
two names. In olden days, Kashmiri girls after
their wedlock earned a new name in their inlaw's
house. This custom has persisted with Kashmiri
Pandits even now.
A section of popular
belief ascribes her home to Gurez where a
contiguous mountain and a spring are named after
her.
Internal evidence as
culled from her verses confirms the first view:-
<verses>
"My parental home is
situated at the tableland of Chandra Hara."
Her another name can be
inferred from this:-
<verses>
"I am bemoaning my
lot in Plaintive cries, the Moon (Kashmiri Zoon)
has been devoured by an eclipse."
Shri Amin Kamil's
well-edited booklet containing only twenty songs
is the only authentic source material available to
us for commenting upon Habba- Khatoon's poetry;
however, in addition to these, Kashmiris ascribe
many more poems to her and these have been
printed. As long as an anthology of all her
available songs is not compiled and given the seal
of an authoritative edition, we have to confine
our comments to these twenty songs only.
Interpolations will be there, more essentially so,
her extraordinary popularity has been a bane for
the original texts composed by her. The more
popular a poet, the more danger is there of
interpolations creeping into his compositions and
after the mischief has been done it seems very
dificult to distinguish gold from dross, and often
dross passes on for gold.
'Habba' is very proud of
her lineage:-
<verses>
"My parents brought
me up with fondest possible care; A host of maid-
servants was at my beck and call. I could not
fore-see that the dreams nourished by me would be
shattered to the ground. No body's youth with
childlike innocence should go unrewarded like that
of mine."
'Habba' testifies to her
being very well-read:-
<verses>
"My parents sent me
to a distant school for receiving tuition. The
teacher there beat me with a tender stick
mercilessly and ignited a fire within me; No
body's youth with child- like innocence should go
unrewarded like that of mine."
She did not ignore the
religious education also:-
<verses>
"I committed thirty
'Siparas' of the Holy Quran to memory in a single
sitting, faithfully adhering to the diacritical
intonations; yet the valentine punctuated with
love could not be read with such facile speed.
What will you gain by my passing away."
She has woven the scene
of her marriage in these words:
<verses>
"My parents blessed
me as a fortunate daughter, and beckoned to me
that the in law's were waiting in the compound for
taking me away. My silver- studded palanquin had
golden ear-rings hangingdown on all sides. Alas !
innocent youth of any body, with child-like
innocence should not go unrewarded as that of
mine."
But all this pomp and
splendour could not pacify the wrath of her
mother-in-law :-
<verses>
"The mother-in law
grabbed me by my hair, which stung me more than
the pangs of death. I fell asleep on the
supporting plank of the spinning wheel, and in
this way, the circular wheel got damaged. I cannot
reconcile myself with the atrocities of the inlaws,
O! my parents, please come to my rescue."
Habba unfolds her love
for her husband like this:-
<verses>
"I have been waiting
for long with extreme patience for you - O! my
love (or Aziz) do not be cross with your moon
(zoon)! I have adorned myself lusciously from top
to toe; so enjoy my youth as lively and inviting
as a pomegranate flower."
But Aziz did not relent
and Habba bad to experience the pangs of forced
widowbood:-
<verses>
"I am on pin-pricks
for want of an avid response to my love; my
bubbling youth is on its ebb. My awake parents, do
read in to the hint I have dropped."
The stings of separation
from her husband in her prime-youth can better be
imagined than described. Perhaps her beiog on the
brink of human patience can justify her consenting
to give company to Yusuf Shah Chak. She could not
wait for legal or other formalities involved in
sharing his bed. This might seem not very
laudable, yet it is true of every maiden who is a
slave to her senses and whose warmth of love has
all along remained unrequitted, moreso, it is all
the more pronounced in the case of a lady who
would like to wreak venegance on tbe callous
society not reciprocating her sentiments, no
matter if she loses ber identity in this bargain.
For the span of years in
which Habba lived, no cogent authority is
available. Mohd Din 'Fauq' and in his foot- steps
Abdul Ahad Azad have given her life span from 1641
to 1552 A.D. on the authority of 'Tarikh
Baharistan Shahi.' But on close examination Shri
Amin Kamil refutes this and says that these dates
are nowhere found in this chronicle. However, her
association with Yusuf Shah can give us a clue as
to the years in which she was still alive. The
reign of Yusuf Shah has been determined as
1579-1585 A.D.; so we can safely assume that
during these years at least Habba was living.
Akbar annexed Kashmir in 1585 A.D. imprisoned
Yusuf Shah and externed him to Bihar; so, when her
paramour Yusuf tell on bad stars, Habba must have
eaten her heart away in disgust and dismay. This
was the second rebuff she received at the bands of
the Destiny, and this impulsive Lady unresponsive
in love, unaccepted by the society still did not
own defeat. She created an exuberant world of her
own, punctuated it with her emotions resonant with
the dirge of what she had got and what she lost.
She lived in her thoughts, so to say.
Such a state of mind is a
fertile ground for the induction of Romanticism.
Habba deliberately ignoring the less pleasant side
of her life indulged in dreamy habit of mind.
Romanticism is the acme of poet's independence of
feelings; under its spell he refuses to be bound
by conventional restraints. A romantic poet has
either the nerve to rebel nor the will to
compromise with his environment. Unmindful of what
is happening around him, he delves deep into the
inner most recesses of his heart and without fear
or malice pours out his felings as they ooze
forth. Such a poet is incapable of clothing his
emotions with artificial adorations. Romanticism
may thus he called the highest water-mark of
poet's individual thinking.
Habba may be called the
harbinger of such kind of poetry in Kashmiri. She
is the originator of popular love-lyrics in
Kashmiri literature. However, her love is earthly;
she could not rise above it; Her passionate love
has its source in the enjoyment or senses and not
their denial in any case. She does not feel fed-up
with sensual pleasures, but at times would like to
revert to these with ever-increasing appetite. She
cannot reconcile herself with the sour-truth of
being a widow who has perforce to abjure
sensuality. She would not like to show herself off
as a pious lady either, under the cover of
so-called piety myriad sins do thrive when a woman
is not mentally ready to own a salutary course of
life for herself. Her poetry, therefore, is a
candid expression of her feelings which has
immenseley contributed to her popularity. She does
not like to play hide and seek. Her appeal is
straight and unsophisticated.
Habba's forte is
love-in-separation. She has not sung even a single
verse eulogizing the munificence of Yusuf Shah
when she was in her company. In the words of
Kalidasa 'Separation chastenes love,' Hence, Habba
like a born-poet selected 'separation' for her
treatment of love. Her verses throughout waft an
air of restlessness and not contentment; Calm
Composure and resignation to be in turmoil to fate
are absent in her poetry. She seems sit
cross-legged, She believes in winning love by
bodily excellence alone:-
<verses>
"I will apply on my
body of spotless silvery sheen, the greasy
whiteness of milky creams; I am imnmensely
enamoured of thee; I will anoint myself with
scented sandal-water. MY love! I will relish to be
your slave."
Even though Habba has
repeatedly and even lustily made a call to flesh
only, yet her songs reverberate an aroma of
lasting flavour; though these songs may sound as
sensual to a moralist, yet 'Habba' has made no
secret of her sensuous attitude to life. She has
all along wanted to drink deep at the fountain of
life without any saintly pretensions. Therein her
moral-courage shines the best. Her voracious
hunger in this respect seems unsatiated. To her
present holds the mirror to what she lost and what
she had gained. Her songs are a lament in every
sense of the term. She is firm-footed in her
convictions and does not vacillate. This is
perhaps the most glaring trait of her poetry. She
has no concern for morality or ethics in the sense
that she would not elect to be a preacher: She
revels in being always loud. She revels in being
immersed in her imagination only, yet her ego is
always loud. She is not shy of parading her beauty
and is rather conscious of it also. Even though
she has paid a heavy price for it, still she has
no regrets in this behalf.
Habba's refrain is love
wedded to pathos; consequently she has kept the
windows of her mind shut and her heart is only
wide-awake in emitting and receiving images from
her fancied dreams. The pathetic content of her
poetery is all the more aggravated by the elusive
nature of her ideal which has consequently earned
for her the epithet 'Nightingale' of Kashmir most
squarely. She does not subscribe to the view that
"It is better to have loved and lost than
never to have loved at all." In the absence
of any appropriate and meaningful response to her
simmering emotions, she has opted for self-
suffering, telling beads of her tear-drops. Be it
Heemal, Arnimaal or Habba Khatoon, it is the
Kashmiri woman bemoaning her lot in pathetic
plaintives, the common subject with all these, the
victims of the conspiracy of circumstances. Habba
Khatoon essentially is a typical example of such a
woman who cannot make any kind of compromise with
life. In this predicament she could have turned a
rebel, but, she instead of it, becomes a martyr by
consent. This is exactly the most salient feature
of Kashmiri womanhood. Towards the closing years
of her life, Habba does express her remorse for
not compromising with the life as it is, but
fashioning it according to her imagination; none
the less in the same breath she admits that missed
opportunities need not be recalled. She does
indicate the 'Achilles Heel' of her personality-to
rule only and not to get ruled:-
<verses>
"I, Habba Khatoon,
is definitely sorry for not adapting myself
submissively to the moonish caprices or my lover.
I do recapitulate those missed opportunities, but
it is now too late to atone for these; therefore,
You, my lover! should not be cross with me."
A sense of guilt seems to
haunt this love-lorn lady, but at the same time
her self-willed nature dismisses this weight on
her heart by taking refuge under the excuse that
race is already run. This subdued expression of
penitence does portray her loud thinking in
unguarded moments, but like a wakeful artist, she
cancels it in the second breath. She does not
flop, as the idiom goes.
Habba's songs are musical
in essence and pathetic in spirit. She has also
been acclaimed as a melody-queen of Kashmiri
poetry. Her popularity is also due to the fact
that her songs are not only a replica of Kashmiri
sentiments but also a potent vehicle of Kashmiri
music. Her originality in this sphere is
undisputed. Even though she has appropriated a
sizable chunk of Persian words and Persian
similes, yet she has refrained from owning Persian
code on metres. She has in their place introduced
home-spun Kashmiri melodies pertaining to rhyme
and rhythm in her quatrains.
Therefore, her songs
self-contained in each quartrain can be more
profitably compared with the 'Vaks' of Lalleshwari
or 'Shruks' of Nund- Reshi from the style-point of
view only. These cannot be classed under 'Gazal'
or 'Nazam' of Persian metrics, despite the fact
that Habba has a tendency to repeat refrains.
Therefore, it is not
without reason that 'Mahjoor'- the doyen of
Kashmiri romantic poets, has dealt a dig at one of
his celebrated predecessors- Rasul Mir in this
pregnent verse, for not paying well-deserved
compliment to Habba Khatoon:-
<verses>
"Rasul Mir of
Shahabad has profusely alluded to the moon of
Qandhar; Why has he been averse to the moon (Zoon,
Kashmiri) of Chandrahar?"
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