The song of humanity

A three-day international conference on Sufism highlights the mystics' message of love, compassion and peace.

Uthth Suttaiya...(Arise, you who sleep)," sang a Sufi singer to an enthralled audience at the India International Centre in Delhi on March 18, 2006, and again at the Khwaja Hall in Nizamuddin Basti the next day. The voice that rose was that of the renowned Iqbal Bahoo of Pakistan, and the words were those of Baba Farid, the Sufi mystic, who lived in Punjab between 1173 and 1266 AD.

Before the March 19 programme in Nizamuddin began, the host, Khwaja Hassan Sani Nizami, told the audience he had documentary evidence that Kabir had visited the dargah at Nizamuddin in the 15th century, and had stayed in the very room in which the musical evening had been organised.

For the audience "" made up of scholars, writers and poets from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, Canada, the US, Italy, France, Poland, Uzbekistan and others "" the Khwaja's words were an evocative affirmation of their intent to celebrate and breathe life into Sufism, at a time when both terrorism and distorted perceptions are dividing people the world over.

"It is simply not possible to talk of the teachings of Sikhism without referring to the teachings of the Sufi saints," declared Prof Namwar Singh, on the second day of the three-day international conference on Sufism, organised by the Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature (FOSWAL), from March 18-20, 2006 in New Delhi. Singh also spoke of the deep-seated influence of Sufi philosophy on Indian literature.

"When I was a little girl in Lahore," said Ajeet Cour, Punjabi litterateur, president of FOSWAL and the spirit behind the conference, "there were two important places of worship (in the culturally alive city) "" Gurdwara Dera Sahab and the dargah, Data Darbar."

Throughout the three-day conference, speakers and delegates continued to come up with little known or forgotten historical facts that celebrate Sufism as "the song of humanity" "" as former prime minister, and chief guest, V P Singh described it "" and reaffirmed its mystics' messages of love, compassion and peace, in the face of continuing Islam-bashing in many parts of the world today.

For instance, several literary historians (and many sikh websites) are of the view that the foundation stone of the har mandar, the goldern temple in Amritsar, was laid by the Sufi mystic, Mian Mir (who lived in Lahore in the 16th century), at the invitation of Guru Arjan Dev.

And Khwaja Hassan Sani Nizami provided an example of the enmeshed cultural fabric and the tradition of religious tolerance on the sub-continent.

At the Dargah of Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer, the subcontinent's most revered dargah "" which was built in stages between the 13th and 16th centuries "" a daily langar has been offered for close to 800 years. Apart from the fact that meat is not cooked for the langar, said the Khwaja, in all these years, no onion or garlic has been used in the food offered at the daily langar.

In contemporary times, a scholar at the conference "" Father (Rev) Paul Jackson, an Australian by birth "" came to a turning point in his life in the early 1970s, when he attended a seminar on Baba Farid in Delhi.

At that time, Jackson was studying for his Master's degree in Medieval History at the Jamia Milia University.

"There were Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Sikh scholars at the seminar on Baba Farid. Sufis, I realised, bring people together... And it was then that I decided I would work (for a doctorate) on a Sufi," said Jackson.

Over the past three decades, Jackson has brought to life the philosophy and work of the 14th century Sufi saint Maneri, who lived in Bihar Sharif, had yearned for a union with the divine and had realised that taking on the burden of ordinary people was what life was all about.

As a tribute to the intent behind organising the conference on Sufism "" that of providing a healing touch "" Syeda S Hameed (Member, Planning Commission) presented a telling example of Sufi thought from her own translation of Maulana Azad's essay on the medieval Sufi mystic, Sarmad.

In this essay, which he wrote in 1910, Azad praised Dara Shikoh: "During the last days of Emperor Shah Jahan, Dar Shikoh was heir apparent. A man of Sufi temperament, he was unique among Mughal princes...a man of excellent taste. The overwhelming proof of his taste is that in pursuing his goal he lost the distinction between the temple and the mosque.... Who can deny the purity of this principle? The moth should seek the flame. If it is desirous of the lamp which is lit only in the mosque, its desire for self-immolation is not complete."

On the relevance of Sufism in the contemporary world, Dr Mustafa Zaman Abassi from Bangladesh said: "The role confronting Muslim intellectuals today is to call a spade a spade...It is important to marginalise Wahabism, Salafism and Salafabism" (puritanical forms of Islam associated with fundamentalism, terrorism, and which exhibit extreme hostility towards intellectualism and mysticism).

The fact that there are over a hundred Rumi Clubs (in the memory of the Sufi poet, Jalaluddin Rumi) in the western world, said Abbasi, "indicates a trend towards appreciating the beauty and philosophy of Sufis".

Perhaps one way in which Sufi philosophy can be appreciated is by understanding "the idea of travel in the travel of Sufi ideas".

While this was the title of a paper presented by Maria, a scholar at the conference, it also seems to hold together an intrinsic aspect of the Sufi way "" that of travelling from the inside out.