Syncretism In The Romantic Poetry Of Lal Ded And Bhakti Poet Mirabai

Lal Ded and Habba Khatoon are two Kashmiri women poets who share commonalities with Bhakti poet Mirabai. Within the comparative framework, the paper would try to explore these commonalities in their poetry. The selection of these three women poets would throw some light on the syncretism in the Sufi and Bhakti tradition as upheld by Lal Ded and Mirabai respectively in their poetry. There are the various “‘facts’ of literary history” which increase the “possibility of its multiplicity as well” (Das 42). The multiplicity of literary history makes it possible to trace the literary history of these three different poets also. The paper would try to explore the “‘internal’ changes and innovations within” the poetry of Habba Khatoon “that did not

From Lal Ded to Habba Khatoon, we see a shift from Sufi poetry to the romantic poetry. It is not that Habba Khatoon is just challenging “the expectations” of those who would appreciate the Sufi poetry of Lal Ded instead of any romantic poetry but she is also here to “extent the horizon” of their expectations (qtd. in Chanda ii-iv) . The aim of this paper is to explore the voices of these three women poets against the patriarchy. For this, the paper shall closely observe a few of their works and see, how their ideology of self-determination sets them apart not only from the women of their times, but also many women of contemporary times. Sisir Kumar Das argues that “there can be changes caused by cultural borrowings or foreign influences, which can be identified as external changes” (44). The changes caused by Habba’s “use of a particular Persian metre” in her poetry that was suggested to her by Sayed Mubarak are external and not internal (Mujeeb 167). Syed Mubarak, himself a poet, has persuaded Habba Khatoon for singing. Her “love of music... offended the susceptibilities” of those who thought music to be frivolous as “the Muslim sharia ‘ah condemns frivolity” (Mujeeb

M. Mujeeb points out “Habba Khatoon was not discovered. She has been everywhere in Kashmir, like her songs, ever since her lifetime. But it was Mahjur’s admiration for her that made people aware of her presence In fact born in a lowly peasant family, there was no way she could’ve had any place in History. Her rise to prominence is located in her unique ability to have been educated by the village Moulvi. Trained in the simple art of reading and writing she embarked on a lyrical journey of writing ‘Lol’ poetry. The closest English stylistic similarity to Lol is borne by romantic lyric poetry. The most extraordinary part of Lol poems are their rendering into soulful music by Habba. The songs are so touching and relatable that people in the valley sing them to this very day. Her marriage with a village farmer left her unhappy. They simply could not see eye to eye on things like creative self-expression that was intrinsic to Habba’s personality. The result was a speedy divorce, following which, Habba would simply go into the wilderness and sing to herself. It is this beauty in her songs that captured the heart of Yousf Shah Check, the ruling monarch of the valley. Yousf and Haba got married shortly after they met each other. Their happiness however was short lived. The Mughal Emperor Akbar summoned Yousf to his court in Delhi and upon Yousf’s arrival imprisoned him in order to destroy any possibility of challenge to the Mughal rule from the