Love in the time of hate
By A.S. Panneerselvan
"Anbenum Peruveli" (The grand expanse called love) is an artistic response to the constant shrinking of spaces for love. It is true that the new technologies have helped people to become more connected. But, it also paved way for the spread of toxic hate speeches that have gained traction and harm our social fabric. What we are facing is a civilisational crisis and it needed a creative counter-move that is not trapped in any of the polarising arguments that have gained currency. Poetry and music are two important civilisational antidotes that confront polarisation in an effective manner. The idea of universalism, love and resolve to fight hate are embedded in the works of Vallalar, the 19^th^ century Tamil saint-poet. "Anbenum Peruveli" draws six songs from the prolific writings of Vallalar. Music, it is widely acknowledged, has the power to shape civilisations, refine culture, transform important social and political conversations to make them more inclusive, and they provide the intangible benefits of promoting physical and mental well-being. Hence, 'Anbenum Peruveli" opted for a musical journey to have Vallalar as our shield and sword in humanity's war for dignity.
During the turbulence following the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City, that marked the beginning of this millennium, I was moved by the life affirming words of the Persian poet Jalal al-Din Rumi. His poem, "Only Breath' was on the lips of every peace lover. It read:
"Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen. Not any religion
or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up
from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any
origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being." [1]
The very next year, in 2002, Shabnam Virmani launched the Kabir Project involving multiple artists to compile and revive Kabir's works.[2] But, my personal journey began in 2001 with the publication of a Tamil book "Arutpa X Marutpa" by Pa. Saravanan, scholar and teacher. Saravanan explored the liberating space offered by Vallalar and its contestation by Saivaite orthodoxy led by Arumugha Navalar. An aspect that links the three important literary figures- Rumi, Kabir and Vallalar---is their unwavering commitment to love and their awareness of the debilitating impact of hate on the social fabric. Saravanan widened the scope of his research to a bigger compilation published a decade later bearing the same name. [3]
My first systematic appreciation of Vallalar as the fount of Tamil Modernity was in 2011 when Ebenezer Singh curated-- 'Fathers and Sons --I' at Delhi involving the works of K.M. Adimoolam, Aparajithan Adimoolam, and Abanindran Adimoolam.[4] I was fascinated by the relationship between Ivan Turgenev's 1862 novel, 'Fathers and Sons', and Tamil Modernity. The 19^th^ century is often referred to as the Golden Era of Russian literature. It was around the same time that the compassionate poems of the philosopher-poet Ramalinga Adigal, popularly known as Vallalar, called Arutpaa (Songs of Grace) came under severe attack. Arumuga Navalar, an erudite Saivaite scholar from Jaffna, was furious that Vallalar's songs were gaining popularity at the expense of traditional Saivaite literature such as the Thevaram and the Thiruvachagam. As a scholar deeply rooted in the Saivaite tradition, Arumuga Navalar could not tolerate this and launched a debate, arguing that Vallalar's work was not Arutpaa but Marutpaa (Songs of Ignorance). In Vallalar's rejection of Saivism in this latter period of his life and his preaching of compassion for all lives was also one of the reasons that provoked the debate.
It was Vallalar's idea of inclusivity that makes him the father of Tamil Modernity. His detractors, including Navalar, even took recourse to the newly established colonial judicial system to debunk Arutpaa's literary and spiritual standing. This gives us an idea of how Tamil's encounter with modernity was a constant war of attrition. Though the British courts could not decide on the merits of Vallalar's poetic prowess or the intrinsic spiritual quality of his work, Arutpaa has defined both Tamil prose and poetry since the mid-19^th^ century.
There are five critical elements in Vallalar's work: simplicity, lyricism, compassion, seeking the truth and finally, refraining from being a literal interpreter of any of the earlier texts. It was a major departure from the militant Saivism that held sway from the days of the later Cholas, and it created the space for multiple coexistences of faith, traditions and ways of life. In a sense, the distinction between tradition and modernity in Tamil narratives, though both words are pregnant with many meanings and interpretations, is exclusivity versus inclusivity. Tamil modernity in the written form drew from its encounters with colonialism, Islamic art, trade and migration. Each added a new dimension and the shift was one constant change without losing its linguistic and lexical moorings. The opening provided by Vallalar was taken up by many creators to further expand the scope and the range of narratives in Tamil. Mayurum Vedanayagam Pillai took the element of simplicity from Vallalar to write Tamil's first novel "Prathaba Mudaliar Saritham" (The History of Prathaba Mudaliar) written even as the court case and the debate between Navalar and Vallalar was raging.
My critical evaluation of Vallalar's work has two trajectories - one, recognising the intrinsic qualities of his poetry and two, placing him alongside some of the defining voices of humanity. His intrinsic qualities can be gleaned from a set of his writings: the four great petitions or the tetralogy of Supplications of Suddha Sanmargam, the Essay on Compassion for Living Beings, and his magnum opus, Arutperumjothi Agaval or the Song of Divine Light.[5]
"Language isn't just a means of communication. It's a reservoir of memory, tradition, and heritage", observed the writer and translator of Jalal al-Din Rumi, Sinan Antoon, a decade ago. Antoon gives us a tool to understand the full import of Vallalar's poetic genius and its intrinsic beauty. Many ancient Tamil works continue to remain comprehensible chiefly due to explorative texts or commentaries, called Urai in Tamil, written on them. In the Tamil literary tradition, we have a fine lineage of commentators who also proved to be teachers such as Nakkeerar, Ilampooranar, Senavaraiyar, Perasiriyar, Nacchinarkkiniyar, Parimelalhagar, Kalladar and Adiyarkku Nallar.[6] And these scholarly interpretations eased one's entry into the wonders of the literary explorations. At a significant level, the arrival of Vallalar marked the direct relationship between the reader and the text and obliterated the need for an intermediary. This elimination of the intermediary extends to Vallalar's spiritualty too, where there is no intermediary between the devotee and God. His ability to express himself without the assistance of a commentator makes Vallalar the beginning of Tamil Modernity, where the cleavages such as the ones between the written and the oral, between the poetic and the prosaic, between the personal and the public, between anthropomorphic supremacy and the respect for all living beings were erased to create a narrative of inclusive dignity.
I have been talking about multiple points of convergence of the views of Vallalar with that of Benares poet Kabir Das and Afghan -- Turkish poet Jalal al-Din Rumi. Though all three are seen as saints, it is their literary credentials, that clearly emphasised love and eschewed hate, that give them the status of being symbols of eternal hope for humanity. A few years ago, Poet Mary Karr, featuring one of Kabir's poems in the "Poet's Choice" column in the Washington Post, noted that "Kabir lists 'birds and animals and the ant' in a way that draws the eye from the soaring sky to the earth's crawly, exoskeletal creatures. In doing so he connects a vague, blank heaven and the tiny, miraculous particulars."[7] But, Vallalar goes a few steps beyond. He wilted whenever he saw a wilting plant and his compassion was never restricted to just humans, animals and insects but extended to all living beings, big, small and tiny.
For him body is central and addressing hunger is an essential spiritual obligation. Ramalinga Vallalar launched poor feeding in Vadalur in 1867 as he was heartbroken at the sight of "those who could not satiate their hunger even after begging from house to house".[8] This central concern has been embodied in the Tamil tradition for more than two thousand years. The human body is called "Mei" in Tamil which also means truth. This is in fact opposed to the orthodox imagination of body as maya---or illusion-- and only the soul as real.
Rumi in his poem "The silence of love" points out the limitations of words in expressing the profundity of love. He wrote:
"Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.
A lover may hanker after this love or that love,
But at the last he is drawn to the king of Love.
However much we describe and explain Love,
When we fall in love we are ashamed of our words.
Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear,
But Love unexplained is better."[9]
But Vallalar goes many steps further. For him, love and empathy are the embodiments of real spirituality and not being trapped in the dogmas of the scriptures. As academic Srilata Raman points out in her book, 'The Transformation of Tamil Religion', Vallalar in 1865, established at Vadalur a religious institution, whose tenets "reflect the impulses of socio-religious reform movements emerging on a pan-Indian scale at this period: a move away from "ritualism" to a meaning-centred congregational life and the general tendency towards monism reflected in the central religious teaching, about an ultimate divine to be worshipped in an aniconic form as the "Great Light of Compassion", Arutperumjothi." The second deck title of Srilata Raman's book explains the larger impact of Vallalar on Tamil society. Her title's second deck: "Ramalinga Swamigal (1823--1874) and Modern Dravidian Sainthood".[10]
In a historical exploration, Srilata Raman locates the rediscovery of Vallalar in the early 20th century to the Self-Respect Movement launched in 1925, by Periyar. She cites V. Geetha and S. V. Rajadurai to detail the Movement's propensity to turn the world upside down, a process that led to a transformative reality: "an energetic mobilizing of men and women across castes and classes, a vision of society that had erupted into rebellion, into acts of defiance, daring and, finally, a time of great churning, when all things were subject to doubt and enquiry, when all matters, however sacred and inviolate were relentlessly interrogated. . . . The oppositional rhetoric and critical energy of the Self-Respect Movement was balanced and sustained in its negative significance by an alternative theory and practice which made it clear the movement's agents sought to destroy only in order to rebuild. Anti-religious attitudes, acts and ideologies were often accompanied by exhortations to rationality and upheld by an abiding faith in the powers of humanity to remake itself."[11]
Much has been written about Rumi's questioning of Islamic Orthodoxy. Professor Cyrus Masroori, California State University San Marcos, has documented the profound influence of Rumi. Prof. Masroori's paper "An Islamic Language of Toleration: Rumi's Criticism of Religious Persecution"[12] is an important read for anyone interested in the multiple aspects of toleration. His paper argues: "Rumi's extensive and inclusive defense of toleration is important in a number of ways...At a time of suspicion and distrust, a person who can speak to both Muslims and the West is of great Value." Another accessible scholarly work is Mehdi Aminrazavi's "Rumi on Tolerance: A Philosophical Analysis".[13] He establishes how Rumi opened up the space to confront debilitating orthodoxy by inculcating the spirit of questioning. Aminrazavi asserted that one of the most important figures in the history of classical Islam who declared war on the simplistic and closed epistemological viewpoint that one can know the absolute Truth in a narrow fashion was Jalal al-Din Rumi. Rumi 's critique, as Aminrazavi points out, counters the claims of those who adhere to an absolutist version of the Truth, and offers a kind of epistemological humility that opens the door to tolerance.
A few years ago, Shabnam Virmani shared her experiences with the Kabir project. For her, Kabir exists not trapped in any one philosophy, but among the many men and women whom she has met across India. She asked the participants to "Let go of the historical Kabir, Let's stop arguing about where he was born, which language he wrote in. His thoughts spread like a virus and that is the beauty of Kabir. It is not the brand Kabir that people identify with, it is the feeling about what he represents."[14] Fariduddin Ayaz had told her in Karachi: "If you do this as a project, it will end. But if you make it a lifelong journey, you will find peace and satisfaction."[15] What is true about Kabir and Shabnam Virmani is true about my engagement with Vallalar.
Shabnam Virmani's observation about mystics fits the bill for Vallalar to the T. She said: "Mystics teach us to interrogate the world and simultaneously to interrogate ourselves; to question our impulse to 'other' certain categories of people based on religion, caste, gender or nationality; to recognize our place in nature and learn to be in consonance with it; to recognize the power of being content, rather than consumptive; to know the power of humility rather than self-aggrandizement; and so to cherish ourselves and each moment with an attitude of non-attachment and very importantly, to learn to quieten our monkey minds. The lessons our children could learn are so many."[16] The wandering mind being compared to monkey is a recurring poetic device used by Vallalar. In one of the songs in the "Anbenum Peruveli" titled 'Ithu Nalla Tharunam', the evocative metaphor of a monkey as mind comes out rather persuasively and has the quality of a manifesto.
It is true that the followers of these three great humanists have tried to present multiple hagiographies, rather than evidence-based life biographies. In the case of Rumi, we have an important 1978 compilation by Idries Shah published as "The Hundred Tales of Wisdom" with a subtitle, "Tales, anecdotes and narratives used in Sufi schools for the development of insights beyond ordinary perceptions."[17] "This is in part", as The Idries Shah Foundation explains, "a hagiography of Rumi; a subtle and haunting slideshow of impressions about the Persian mystic's origins, teachings, and associates, which were distilled and rendered for a modern audience." Shabnam Virmani explained how there are several hagiographies that carry unverifiable narratives about Kabir's birth. While most historians agree that Kabir was born into a family of Muslim weavers, popular legend says he was born a Hindu Brahmin and brought up by a Muslim. There were disputes over the possession of his body too. The legend goes that while Hindus and Muslims argued about whether to burn him or bury him, Kabir's shroud was lifted revealing nothing but a heap of flowers. In the case of Vallalar, the writing of hagiographies has become an industry and every decade there is a new story which makes the line that separates faith from fact more fuzzy and complex.
Drawing from Srilata Raman's scholarly book, here is the bare minimum biographical account of Vallalar that is required to understand the significance of the "Anbenum Peruveli" initiative.[18] Vallalar was born in Marudur in the South Arcot district of Tamil Nadu on October 5, 1823. Srilata Raman notes: "His family moved around upon the death of his father and finally came to the city of Madras, then the fastest growing urban centre of the Madras Presidency, when he was still a child. Ramalingar lived the first 30 years of his life in Madras, where he gradually acquired the erudition of a traditional scholar of Śaivite religious texts and classical Tamil literature. Disciples flocked to him, and he was part of a traditional scholarly community. Thus far, it was a conventional life though his hagiographies hint, from the inception, at the unusual and the miraculous which dot his life and presage the greatness to come. In 1858, at the age of 35, Ramalingar decided to leave Madras permanently and commenced on a journey, details of which are unclear, for he seems to have led a wanderer's life before eventually returning to the territory of his birth. He finally settled in Vadalur in the South Arcot area near where he was born... In 1870, he left Vadalur for a small village near it called Mēṭṭukuppam. Nevertheless, in 1872, on the basis of his instructions, a temple was built in Vadalur. Its foundations had the form of an eight-pointed star and it consisted of a central hall in which the community could do daily worship in front of a lamp. The temple was named the Hall of True Wisdom (Cattiya Ñāṉa Capai). By 1873, though, Ramalingar seemed to distance himself from the organization he had attempted to build up. An important date in the fledging religious organization had been the celebration of the Kārttikai viratam, in November, when Ramalingar would deliver a public discourse outside his residence. In November 1873, though, he refused to do so, placing instead a lighted lamp in front of his room door and locking himself inside. During the next three months he emerged from his room only occasionally. January 1874 dawned. On the midnight of 30th January 1874, a Friday, he spoke to some of his close disciples, went into his room, and closed the door, which at his request was not opened for several months. He was never seen again."[19]
Beyond the question of classifications and categories, the aspect of Vallalar that deserves close scrutiny is "his particular focus on the concept of, Jivakarunya Ozhukkam (The Conduct of Compassion Towards Living Being), which becomes central to his religious doctrines in the final decade of his life. The readings by Periyar of Jivakarunya Ozhukkam gave birth to the Self-Respect movement and that by Thiru. Vi. Kalayasundaram gave institutional arrangement for the labour movement in Tamil Nadu. Srilata Raman's reading goes beyond the usual canonical studies on Ramalingar's Śaivism that are available. This includes a fascinating paper by New Zealand academic Richard S. Weiss titled "Voluntary Associations and Religious Change in Colonial India: Ramalinga Adigal's 'Society of the True Path'." As Srilata points out these myriad readings explore Vallalar's doctrines "almost exclusively from the perspective of its vague debt to the devotional literature of the Tamil Śaivasiddhānta or as somehow constituting a modern and fresh departure from it in the most general terms while not giving us greater insight into specific works beyond the devotional canon that fertilized his thoughts or contributed to his distinct notions of compassion." [20]
While Periyar, Thiru. Vi. Kalayasundaram and Uran Adigal have written extensively on Vallalar's concern about hunger, illness and well-being, I am drawing once again from a succinct summary provided by Srilata Raman in the chapter, "Hunger and Compassion -- the Cīvakāruṇya oḻukkam" to understand how compassion and empathy played a central role in Vallalar's defining views. It is pertinent to recollect a portion of Srilata Raman's summary of Vallalar's Jivakarunya Ozhukkam (The Conduct of Compassion Towards Living Beings):
"1) The aim of a human birth is to obtain one's self (āṉmalāpam/ātmalābha). This is nothing but getting the complete, natural bliss (pūraṇa iyaṟkai iṉpam) of God (kaṭavuḷ) and then living the great incomparable life (oppaṟṟa periyavāḻvu) that comes from the former.
2) How is one to achieve this? Through God's grace (aruḷ) -- which is also his natural illumination (iyaṟkai viḷakkam).
3) How does one obtain this grace? It can only be obtained through the conduct of compassion towards living beings. There is no other way. What does this mean? "Grace is God's mercy, his natural light. Jivakarunyam is the souls' mercy, it is the natural light of their self". One can obtain grace only through grace, he says. In another passage of this section Ramalingar adds: "Jivakarunyam is not only the main means to obtain God's grace but it is also the light of that single state of grace".[21]
The question of hunger is dealt with extensively by Vallalar as he feared that hunger would undermine humanity and that it would inevitably lead to the upending of all normative behaviour in a society. Vallalar wrote: "If when hunger comes, parents will dare to sell their children, children their parents, wives will be sold by their husbands and a husband by his wife, thus trying to change the suffering brought about by that hunger, then, it is unnecessary to say that they would sell that which is alien to them like house, cattle, land, possessions, to quell their hunger.... Jivakarunyam is having the hunger of each person satisfied, while regarding them as equal, in accordance with their customs, regardless of which place those who suffer from hunger come from, which religion, which caste, of whatever conduct, without instructing them or enquiring as to the customs of their country, religion, caste, conduct, etc., knowing that God's light shines equally in all living beings..."
Vallalar's conclusive statement, as recollected by Srilata Raman, is:
"From all this, it will be known that the conduct of compassion towards all living beings alone is the true path (Sanmargam)". Merit and demerit are solely the possession or the lack of the conduct of Jivakarunyam. The illumination which one gets through the conduct of Jivakarunyam is the light of God. The conduct of Jivakarunyam is the real divine worship."[22]
The desire to make Vallalar more visible is not a project of vanity and self-promotion. It is often said that Vallalar's vision transcends religion, caste, and creed barriers, recognizing divinity in every atom of the universe. Prof. Romila Thapar in her brilliant monograph, "Voices of Dissent: An Essay", has explained the centrality and the importance of visibility. Drawing from the Freedom Struggle, she observed: "In the colonial situation, satyagraha gave the protesters and the reason for the protest-irrespective of whether they were protesting over salt or cloth or the freedom of a people- a marked visibility. This is what the protesters wanted but the authorities did not. Visibility is a source of strength in civil disobedience."[23] By providing Vallalar greater visibility in his bicentenary year through this initiative, we aim to gain the strength and courage to wage a new civil disobedience movement against hate and to generate space for love and coexistence.
https://msbunburyist.wordpress.com/2023/05/30/12-of-the-best-rumi-poems-that-everyone-must-read/ ↩︎
https://www.amazon.in/அருட்பா-மருட்பா-கண்டனத்-திரட்டு-Thirattu-ebook/dp/B09YM4WYRZ ↩︎
https://artd4.com/product-category/artists/ebenezer-singh-artists/ ↩︎
https://thewayoftruetheism.wordpress.com/tag/vallalars-last-discourse/ ↩︎
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/he-has-made-feeding-the-poor-his-mission/article29104496.ece ↩︎
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781315794518/transformation-tamil-religion-srilata-raman (open access) ↩︎
https://www.amazon.in/Towards-Non-Brahmin-Millennium-V-Geetha/dp/8185604371 ↩︎
https://www.academia.edu/42078291/Rumi_and_the_Idea_of_Tolerance ↩︎
https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/making-kabir-your-own/article24461054.ece ↩︎
https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/making-kabir-your-own/article24461054.ece ↩︎
https://prakriti.edu.in/shabd-shala-elucidating-the-literary-gems-of-india/#:~:text=In the words of Shabnam,place in nature and learn ↩︎
https://idriesshahfoundation.org/books/the-hundred-tales-of-wisdom/ ↩︎
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781315794518/transformation-tamil-religion-srilata-raman (open access) ↩︎
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781315794518/transformation-tamil-religion-srilata-raman (open access) ↩︎
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781315794518/transformation-tamil-religion-srilata-raman (open access) ↩︎
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781315794518/transformation-tamil-religion-srilata-raman (open access) ↩︎
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781315794518/transformation-tamil-religion-srilata-raman (open access) ↩︎
https://www.seagullbooks.org/voices-of-dissent/#:~:text=Written%20by%20one%20of%20India%27s,have%20argued%20since%20time%20immemorial. ↩︎