
The religious ritalsafter arrival of
holy relic
Ibrahim Adilshah II, the fifth king of the Adil Shahi
dynasty is known in the Indian history as "Jagadguru
Badshah." He tried to bring in cultural
harmony, between the Shiyas and the Sunnis (sects within
Islamic religion) and between Hindus and Muslims through
music. He was a great lover of music, played musical
instruments, sang and composed praises of Hindu deities
Saraswati and Ganapati. He wrote the book Kitab-E-Navras
(Book of Nine Rasas) in Dakhani. It is a collection
of 59 poems and 17 couplets. According to his court-poet
Zuhuri, he wrote it to introduce the theory of nine
Rasas, which occupies most important place in Indian
aesthetics, to acquaint people who were only brought
up in Persian ethos. The book opens with prayer to Saraswati,
the Goddess of learning. He claimed that his father
was divine Ganapati and mother the Holy Saraswati. For
him, the Tanpura personified learning -- "Ibrahim
the tanpurawala became learned due to grace of god,
living in the city of Vidyanagari" (Vidyanagari
is the earlier name of Bijapur.)akhni
(an early South Indian dialect of Urdu) marasi. Although
Persian marasi of Muhtasham Kashani were still recited,
the Adil Shahi and Qutb Shahi rulers felt the need to
render the Karbala tragedy in the language of common
Muslims. In the Adil Shahi and Qutb Shahi kingdom of
Deccan, marasi flourished, especially under the patronage
of Ali Adil Shah and Muhammad Quli Qutb Shahmarsiya
writers themselves, and poets such as Ashraf Biyabani.
Urdu marasi written during this period are still popular
in South Indian villages. One such marsiya expresses
the pathos of the moment when Imam Hussain's loved ones
bid him farewell:
Farewell, O King of martyrs, (Alwidayu)
Farewell, O Ruler of both worlds,
..................................
Mustafa [the Prophet] mourns for you in Paradise,
like Yaqub mourned in the aftermath of his separation
with Yusuf.[11]
The Yaqub-Yusuf motif,[12] which by no means is restricted
to marsiya, recurs over and over in this genre since
the son of Imam Hussain, Ali Akbar, was supposedly as
handsome as the Qu'ranic Yusuf, and since the Imam's
distress after the martyrdom of his son was analogous
to Yaqub's sorrow after his son parted from him. The
North Indian marsiya writers used similar motifs and
metaphors when the centre of Urdu literature moved to
the North after the kingdoms of the Deccan were annexed
by the Mughals.
As Mughal power began to wane in the aftermath of the
rule of Aurangzeb (1706), other autonomous Muslim powers
sprung up in India. The Navabs of Avadh, Twelver Shi'is
and patrons of Urdu literature and poetry, provided
auspices for the sublimation of the marsiya genre in
North India.
URDU POETRY
Urdu was ordered to be used as an official language
by Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur (1580-1672) and was
in use In Golcunda also at the time of Abdullab Qutb
Shah (1626-1672). The language was known in the Deccan
as Hindavi or Deccani right up to the dissolution of
Adil Shahi kingdom in 1686 and the Qutb Shahi kingdom
a year later.
URDU POETRY can be broadly divided into three eras.
The first period was that when Urdu had the Hindu imprint
on it. There are several hundred poets belonging to
that period, and the prominent names include Quli Qutab
Shah (1580-1611), Hassan Shauki, Ali Adil Shah Sani
Shahi, and Shahi Bejapuri. In that period, Urdu was
called "Rekh'tah" (Dialect of women). These
earliest poets followed the style of Hindu poetry where
a woman's feelings were expressed in a woman's idiom.
I am using the term Hindu instead of Hindi because while
Muslims also inhabited the Sub-continent (Hindustan)
at that time, the poetry predominantly reflected the
Hindu way of life, bearing their religious teachings
and culture.
Like any other movement, feminism bears a variety of
ideas. There is no single feminist ideology. The divisions
commonly accepted among feminist ideologies do not make
the views of these feminist poetesses different or contradictory.
There are infinite similarities in different feminist
assertions. The fundamental and basic ideas and concepts
are shared among all of them. The definition that covers
all feminist beliefs and attitudes, as given by David
B. is as follows