THE LEGENDS OF KABIR
There exists a pack of legends about Kabir’s life, birth, death and wisdom, but he was first a poet. A poet who, along with Tulsidas, has colonised the Hindi popular imagination for centuries. A poet who democratised poetry, religion, wisdom and spirituality by liberating them from the clutches of castes, shrines
and books. A poet of candid wisdom, a poet who critiqued social norms and practices, Kabir also interrogated himself. He saw the world upside down. Blasphemy was perhaps his favourite rasa.
Kiran Nagarkar weaves a medieval dastan-like novelistic tale around Kabir, forging yet another legend around him. Nagarkar, however, while taking into account ‘facts’, creates a fiction that does have contemporary resonance. His book’s title— The Arsonist—alludes to a famous Kabir verse: “Kabir stands in the marketplace/ A torch in his hand./ Whosoever will set fire to his house/ Come, join me.” If Kabir’s poetry is to be considered evidence, he did indeed want to set fire to conventional values, shallow beliefs, vacuous wisdom and books that inspired bigotry. He wanted to finally arrive at the truth.
Nagarkar’s very readable narrative preserves Kabir’s interrogative spirit but gets him mixed up with statecraft. As ‘The Ruler’ seeks Kabir’s sometimes blunt and cruel advice, Kabir, in turn, gets embroiled in political intrigue. A lot happens in the weaver’s workshop. In the novel, Kabir has many apprentices and workers—both Hindu and Muslim—who somehow always feel emboldened to ask uncomfortable questions of their master. The court of the State is a space for advice and complicity. The workshop, in
contrast, is a space for seeking knowledge, for carrying out interrogation and debate.
The narrative is populated with issues and incidents that relate to the massacre of Muslims, to questions of beef eating and to lynching in the name of cows. The freedom of women, caste and creed all come up as themes too. There is a radical questioning of God. Kabir asserts, “God, if I may use one of these new-fangled academic terms, is the unified theory of the universe. Good and evil, warmonger and pacifist, Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Christian, Buddhist, materialist and preacher, atheist and believer are all encompassed in Him.
He’s large enough and wise enough to accommodate all contradictions.”
In another telling episode of the book, the helpless ‘Governor’ is seen watching the butchering of Muslims in their thousands. Kabir then tells the Ruler: “One murder and the culprit goes to jail and then the law hangs him […] But kill a thousand or two, or a million or more and you are above the law. And before you know it, amnesia sets in and the mass murderer is hailed as a hero, a saviour of the people.”
Despite being “a brigand and a highway robber”, despite indulging in “whoring and blasphemies”, despite his desire to shock, scandalise and always be sensational, Kabir lands up in heaven. When he faces God, he is referred to as “our annual gesture of forgiveness. Our token sinner and untouchable”.
The Arsonist tells an uplifting tale about Kabir, a poet, saint and mystic who remains contemporary, just one of us. In the end, the book really is about us—our mess, our chaos, our clarity, our way out. ■