Kabir’s mystical poetry enthrals newer generations. This simple, unpretentious translation, with helpful commentary, is a model publishing effort too.
The rise and rise of Kabir in the twentieth century constitutes perhaps the biggest turnaround in the Hindi literary canon. In a book titled Hindi Navaratna (Nine Gems of Hindi) published in 1910, Kabir was not included, but when this caused a controversy, he was admitted into the second edition of the book in 1924. Kabir has ever since firmly held his place as one of the four great Bhakti poets of Hindi, together with Tulsidas, Surdas, and Meera.
In recent decades, in fact, with the emergence of an Anglophone, godless ‘secular’ middle-class, Kabir has achieved a kind of apotheosis that might have shocked him. At condolence meetings for the dear departed in this upper social class, his bhajans and sakhis (i.e., dohas or couplets) are now sung with a new-age piety. He who castigated all rituals observed by both Hindus and Muslims has himself become part of the final ritual of human life. People who would balk at the Bhagavad Gita being recited now reverently nod when Jheeni jheeni beeni chadariya is sung, without realising that Kabir is here deploying the same metaphor of the body as a garment or sheet for the soul that the Gita had used.
Though some simple didactic verses of Kabir are taught even to school-children, he is one of the most difficult and puzzling of our poets. He is medieval in a way that Tulsi and Sur are not, for he lived a century or more before them, and his language is neither Awadhi (as in Tulsi) or Braj (as in Sur and Meera) but an unsettled mixture of dialects. Nor is his god the familiar Rama or Krishna but instead a nirguna or abstract entity who is by definition ineffable and impossible to describe. Besides, Kabir is not only a mystic but also an occultist, fond of speaking in befuddling riddles and puzzling paradoxes, especially when composing in verse-forms longer than the couplet.
Kabir is therefore more widely revered than actually read. In the standard scholarly edition in Hindi by Mataprasad Gupta, his couplets run to 139 pages, while his longer and more challenging verses occupy nearly twice as much space. Even the ubiquitous Jheeni jheeni beeni quickly gets us into deep waters when three vital nerves supposedly determining our whole consciousness are named as ingla, pingla and sukhman, for which no equivalents can be found in either the English language or modern science.
However, that still leaves quite enough Kabir to go round, and to please and provoke us through his packed and prickly couplets. In his new selection and translation, it is this known territory that Chandan Sinha keeps to, and yet what he has to offer will be new to many Kabir enthusiasts. For one thing, his selection is quite substantial. It comprises 122 couplets, which should be about 100 more than most readers may recall having come across. And for another, his translation is the most elaborate, helpful and reader-friendly that Kabir has perhaps ever been presented in.
This is because Sinha’s translation of the selected verses is simple, straightforward and unpretentious. He is a self-effacing translator, willing to help the reader but content to remain invisible. More importantly, he supplements his translation with a commentary on each verse running to about ten to twelve lines, which spells out the meaning of that verse as no mere translation can. A poet like Kabir, who wrote 500 years ago, belonged to a different universe and spoke in a language now difficult to understand even for scholars. The common reader certainly needs such explication of his text—or what in Translation Studies is with technical precision called ‘explicitation’.
Another helpful feature of this volume, which distinguishes it from other English versions, is that this commentary on the text is published not as a footnote in a smaller font-size at the bottom of the page, nor as an end-note right at the end of the book far away from the verse. The publishers Rupa have been so generous as to print the Hindi text, the English translation, and the detailed commentary all on the same page in the same font-size, and this is a blessing to the common reader. It also leaves open spaces on the page for the bilingual text to breathe in, so to say. It helps the reader linger on each page, and perhaps even to scribble here and there a note of her own. It is hoped that Rupa will adhere to this enabling new format also in their future volumes of translation; indeed, this enlightened practice may be commended to other publishers too.
Many readers will find their old favourites here in a new garb. To whom shall I bow, my Guru or the Lord?/ I bow to you, O Guru, for you have shown me God. Or, Clay cries out to potter, “Why quash me with your feet?/ A day will come when I shall trample you beneath!”
Even in his modesty, Kabir can seem superior. My speech is of the east. Therefore, none can follow me. / Only those who are from the east can hope to follow me.
In his commentary, Sinha identifies this as “a rare autobiographical sakhi” but wisely desists from indulging in any speculation about what else the “east” could mean, beyond the fact that Kabir lived in Banaras, which was to the east, in the Bhojpuri region. (Indeed, the Urdu poet Mir in the 18th century derided residents of Lucknow as “denizens of the east”, for he himself was a proud Delhi-wallah.)
In contrast, Vinay Dharwadker, in his formidably scholarly translation of Kabir (2003) suggests in his end-note (to be found in small print, full 60 pages after the verse) that the “East is frequently a symbol of esoteric spiritual knowledge”—forgetting that this stereotype of East and West was a much later ‘Orientalist’ invention of England and Europe, which Kabir hadn’t heard of.
As seen above, Sinha chooses to render rhyme as rhyme, rejecting the tyranny of metre-less rhyme-less ‘free’ verse, which T.S. Eliot inaugurated as the new normal in poetry only about a hundred years ago. Sinha says he wants to translate “everything” as he found it in the original, which is of course rhymed, and though scholars may frown, the common reader will support him. All over the world, most of us still grow up believing that it is poetry, and not prose, only when it rhymes; indeed, we see rhyme as the trademark of poetry and a clincher of poetic meaning. The rhymed Kabir in English here is thus a familiar and compelling poet, just as in the Hindi original.
(Harish Trivedi has taught English literature in Delhi and Hindi literature in Chicago)