Be it Punjab’s sufi poetry like ‘Heer Waris Shah’ or Sindh’s sufi poetry by Shah Latif like Sassi Punhoo, the poetry and message by sufis of the area was conveyed through female characters.
Bulleh Shah’s ‘Ranjha Ranjha Kardi main aapi Ranjha hoi’ is also expression of female character.
Shah Hussain’s ‘Jhok Ranjhan de Jana, naal mere koi chale’ is also the same story.
Was it cultural tradition to say something soothing and sensible in disguise of a woman? or people were more attracted if things were said in that style?
Normally desi men have been alergic to name their ladies in public since centuries, but when it comes to poetry and literature, they don’t follow same for ladies from their own culture. Even, if someone pay little attention to Majalis e Muharram and Sham e GhareebaN, the ladies from Prophet’s family are addressed without showing the possessive desi nature.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
....Sufis weren't your average 'desi' men, that's why.
You always get heightened form of romanticism in literary. One of the purposes of creative literature is to create an idealised world, characters and situations you don't see in your normal surrounding. If you read Shakespeare, you'd would think perhaps people in Elizabethan era worshipped women.
The creative writers are not supposed to think like everyday people and follow the cultural norms, they convey their own desired form of perfection through words. The beauty they see is a product of their imagination?
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
In literary, women have been purified, anglicised, idealised, romanced and worshipped as far as the human records in arts can go. The artist as oppose to common man have always loved femininity, before women started writing about themselves, it was the men who were writing about woman.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
In literary, women have been purified, anglicised, idealised, romanced and worshipped as far as the human records in arts can go. The artist as oppose to common man have always loved femininity, before women started writing about themselves, it was the men who were writing about woman.
It may be off-topic question.... Does desi culture give proper respect to women?
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
....Sufis weren't your average 'desi' men, that's why.
You always get heightened form of romanticism in literary. One of the purposes of creative literature is to create an idealised world, characters and situations you don't see in your normal surrounding. If you read Shakespeare, you'd would think perhaps people in Elizabethan era worshipped women.
The creative writers are not supposed to think like everyday people and follow the cultural norms, they convey their own desired form of perfection through words. The beauty they see is a product of their imagination?
Interesting. This suggests Sufi writers didn't address complementary problems of their period and hide the facts behind romanticism.
There is a long debate in literary circles of Sindh about Sufi poetry and Karo-Kari (honor killing). They say its a recent phenomenon and if that was not the case characters like Sohni (who used to meet her lover secretly though she was married), but this didn't earn her title of bad woman. In Shah Latif's poetry, a character Moomal was seen by her lover Rano with a guy ( in fact that was Moomal's sister in disguise), but Rano didn't kill her and left some of his possession there a left. This again show that Karo-Kari was an alien concept in Sindh just 2 centuries ago.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
The reason might be more sinister than romanticism or idealism. Women were expected to be subservient, obedient, hence the epitome of love for someone higher was a female or acted like a female towards his love.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
....Sufis weren't your average 'desi' men, that's why.
You always get heightened form of romanticism in literary. One of the purposes of creative literature is to create an idealised world, characters and situations you don't see in your normal surrounding. If you read Shakespeare, you'd would think perhaps people in Elizabethan era worshipped women.
The creative writers are not supposed to think like everyday people and follow the cultural norms, they convey their own desired form of perfection through words. The beauty they see is a product of their imagination?
disagree with bolded part as that is not the case with sufism in subcontinent.
Sufis believe in women’s inferiority, physically and spiritually. Metaphor of weak character in their poetry is woman, in front of a man. Similarly they refer to themselves as women and their murshid as a man. Also they do not relegate the desi culture of oppressing women.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
disagree with bolded part as that is not the case with sufism in subcontinent.
Sufis believe in women’s inferiority, physically and spiritually. Metaphor of weak character in their poetry is woman, in front of a man. Similarly they refer to themselves as women and their murshid as a man. Also they do not relegate the desi culture of oppressing women.
What you may call inferiority could also mean limitations of being a woman in those times. The fact that Sufis wrote as referred to themselves as woman and gave her the characteristics of a mureed is a perfect example to highlight how they went against the desi culture of keeping the woman mute and anonymous by giving her a voice in their writing. They explored the depth of women’s emotions, desires, dilemma, and adventures and personified female strength and rebellion. Women were assigned the mureed status to epitomise the generous nature female loyalty, their capacity to hold platonic love for eternity, their longing to have a virtuous male character into their lives.
The classic male murshid *and female *mureed analogy can perhaps be taken as a metaphorical device to convey the untold truth about female restlessness, their desire for gentle guidance, acceptance, purpose and identity in male dominated society where women were habitually oppressed.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
disagree with bolded part as that is not the case with sufism in subcontinent.
Sufis believe in women’s inferiority, physically and spiritually. Metaphor of weak character in their poetry is woman, in front of a man. Similarly they refer to themselves as women and their murshid as a man. Also they do not relegate the desi culture of oppressing women.
I disagree with the bold part based on my study of Shah Latif. In his poetry male characters get prominence when they acknowledge women equality and in some cases when they get themselves free from worldly status.
Renouncing of throne by King Edward VIII is a latest episode of sacrifice by a man for a lady in continuation of old episodes of Punhoo, Mehwaal and Ranjha renouncing their status depicted in Sufi poetry. The most daring and courageous characters in sufi poetry are females. If sufis had limited them in showing women as inferior, then feminist poets of 20th century like Amarta Pritam had not referred to Waris Shah in 'aj aakhan waris shah nu'.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
*Interesting. This suggests Sufi writers didn't address complementary problems of their period and hide the facts behind romanticism. *
There is a long debate in literary circles of Sindh about Sufi poetry and Karo-Kari (honor killing). They say its a recent phenomenon and if that was not the case characters like Sohni (who used to meet her lover secretly though she was married), but this didn't earn her title of bad woman. In Shah Latif's poetry, a character Moomal was seen by her lover Rano with a guy ( in fact that was Moomal's sister in disguise), but Rano didn't kill her and left some of his possession there a left. This again show that Karo-Kari was an alien concept in Sindh just 2 centuries ago.
This is quite an unreasonable interpretation. A very bizarre thing to say.
The thing is poets and creative writers possessed the power and the means to talk about social problems without explicitly commenting on them. This is the beauty of studying literature, before you qualify to read a single word from a literary piece, you ought to do some context analysis of the time the work was created. It is only then you can identify and understand the subliminal protest, the depiction of immorality as the writer sees it in the world he is living and how at the same time he creates an ideal parallel world for his readers see, imagine and long for.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
What you may call inferiority could also mean limitations of being a woman in those times. The fact that Sufis wrote as referred to themselves as woman and gave her the characteristics of a mureed is a perfect example to highlight how they went against the desi culture of keeping the woman mute and anonymous by giving her a voice in their writing. They explored the depth of women’s emotions, desires, dilemma, and adventures and personified female strength and rebellion. Women were assigned the mureed status to epitomise the generous nature female loyalty, their capacity to hold platonic love for eternity, their longing to have a virtuous male character into their lives.
I stay they believe women are inferior spiritually then men. You can refer to their poetry. I know because i use to read Sufi poetry.
Only media portrays Sufi poetry as feminist piece of art whereas Sufi poetry is not supposed to be what they want to make out of it. Just like you said, creative writers do not address is real life issues or problems at hand, media is far from the interpretation of Sufi poetry.
Just giving an example of line by Sultan Bahu. Aiy dunya zan haiz pleeti
[QUOTE]
The classic male murshid *and female *mureed analogy can perhaps be taken as a metaphorical device to convey the message the message of female restlessness, longing for guidance, acceptance, purpose and identity in male dominated society where women were habitually oppressed.
[/QUOTE]
If you ask pro-sufis or someone from sufi study circle they will let you know the story behind this analogy.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
I disagree with the bold part based on my study of Shah Latif. *In his poetry male characters get prominence when they acknowledge women equality and in some cases when they get themselves free from worldly status. *
Renouncing of throne by King Edward VIII is a latest episode of sacrifice by a man for a lady in continuation of old episodes of Punhoo, Mehwaal and Ranjha renouncing their status depicted in Sufi poetry. The most daring and courageous characters in sufi poetry are females. If sufis had limited them in showing women as inferior, then feminist poets of 20th century like Amarta Pritam had not referred to Waris Shah in 'aj aakhan waris shah nu'.
It would be interesting to see if you could share some poetry implying so.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
It may be off-topic question.... Does desi culture give proper respect to women?
No it's not off topic question, it's a very good question to further the discussion.
First thing first, I am not qualified to talk on 'desi' culture, I can only comment Pakistani culture.
The word 'proper' is subjective, if not, just vague. To me, proper respect for woman would mean legal, political, social and economic equality, considering there had never been a proper women's movement in Pakistan nor we are seeing any present chances of any such movement brewing under the surface, it is not surprising to see women's rights are virtually non existent in Pakistan.
However, if you ask me if women are respected in domestic sphere, I'd say yes. Women as mothers, sisters and daughters are deeply loved and respected. Women as wives are also loved but what I find interesting is that when women are married they are more exposed to woman on woman disrespect than facing direct oppression by men.
When I was studying English literature here in Britain, I always used to really admire the way in Eastern Islamic culture woman's body is considered sacred. I'm sure there's plethora of sexual references in Eastern Islamic literature but women are not explicitly presented as sexual objects neither in visual arts nor in literary texts.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
I stay they believe women are inferior spiritually then men. You can refer to their poetry. I know because i use to read Sufi poetry.
Only media portrays Sufi poetry as feminist piece of art whereas Sufi poetry is not supposed to be what they want to make out of it. Just like you said, creative writers do not address is real life issues or problems at hand, media is far from the interpretation of Sufi poetry.
Just giving an example of line by Sultan Bahu.
Aiy dunya zan haiz pleeti
If you ask pro-sufis or someone from sufi study circle they will let you know the story behind this analogy.
Considering women go through menstural cycle and every month for certain days they are asked by their God to refrain from doing supreme form of worshipping by defaults adds to the idea spiritual weakeness.
I don't live in Pakistan. never studied there, can't finish a book in Urdu to save my life, don't know what media says about Sufi poetry. However, I am a woman, an ex literature student, have studied plenty of feminist texts and the entire movement in itself, like to call myself a feminist. I can assure you, give me a Sufi text in an exam room condition and I would be able to answer how it is a pro-woman text. Literature is all about interpretation, there is technically no such thing is right or wrong literary interpretation.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
This is quite an unreasonable interpretation. A very bizarre thing to say.
The thing is poets and creative writers possessed the power and the means to talk about social problems without explicitly commenting on them. This is the beauty of studying literature, before you qualify to read a single word from a literary piece, you ought to do some context analysis of the time the work was created. It is only then you can identify and understand the subliminal protest, the depiction of immorality as the writer sees it in the world he is living and how at the same time he creates an ideal parallel world for his readers see, imagine and long for.
My point is when someone is perceived as promoting idealism coupled with romanticism, how could that writer be able to convey facts of his/her era.
I don't say Sufis didn't talk about problems of their era. What I believe is their poetry is an alternate source to history of that era. To achieve this, Sufis definitely exercised a balanced approach between romanticism and facts. Their writing might be full of metaphors, but this is acceptable norm in literature in turmoil times and one can not blame writers from such eras (like Zia era) to write abstract things.
Re: Why Sufis conveyed their message through female characters?
I stay they believe women are inferior spiritually then men. You can refer to their poetry. I know because i use to read Sufi poetry.
Only media portrays Sufi poetry as feminist piece of art whereas Sufi poetry is not supposed to be what they want to make out of it. Just like you said, creative writers do not address is real life issues or problems at hand, media is far from the interpretation of Sufi poetry.
Just giving an example of line by Sultan Bahu.
Aiy dunya zan haiz pleeti
If you ask pro-sufis or someone from sufi study circle they will let you know the story behind this analogy.
If referring to haiz as paleeti is anti feminism, then what would we say about verses of Quran with same labels to haiz?
