D R Bhagat
“Chaudah sau chhappan jeth punam chander suvara,
Sri kabir sahib ka janhit kashi mein avtara.”
As per this couplet Kabir was born in 1398AD on a Jayeshth Purnima day. As per legend he appeared on a lotus flower in a pond known as Lehar Tara near Varanasi. Later this saint worked to take out the people from darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge. He was a great mystic saint and poet. Mysticism is a science of searching for God within one’s own body. He was brought up by a Muslim weaver couple Neeru and Neema. He had a spiritual inclination from his very birth. Devotion to the name of God and reverence for the holy men were innate with him. He became a disciple of Ramanand at a very tender age of 11. His initiation by Guru Ramanand was not by a usual and customary process adopted at that time but a unique and indirect method was adopted as the persons of low caste were debarred to be initiated as per Hindu sanskriti. One day Kabir laid down himself on the stairs of a Ganga Ghat where Ramanand used to go for a bath in the early morning.
Kabir Jayanti
As it was a dark the foot of Ramanand fell inadvertently on the face of Kabir. Ramanand asked the child Kabir to say ‘Ram’. As Kabir had a spiritual knowledge from the very beginning, he asked Ramanand which Ram I should utter. He said,
“ek ram dashrath ka beta, ek ram ghat ghat mein leta,
ek ram ka sarv pasara, vohi ram hai sabse niyaara.”
With this he was initiated and Ramanand became his spiritual guru. However when the people and other disciples of Ramanand came to know about this they protested in anger and even excommunicated the guru for his act of initiation of a low caste person.
It was the time when fanaticism and bigotry were the order of the day and superstitions were eating into the vitals of life. People fought over the temples and mosques, pork and beef and forgot that Ram and Rahim are the two names of the same supreme God. Seeing all this Kabir was deeply pained. He raised his voice against all these differences of outward symbols and laid stress on the purity of life in word, deed and thought. He also denied the superiority by birth. He said,
“unche kul mein janmya,karni unch na hoye.”
He said, one becomes high or low on account of his deeds and not on account of his caste or birth. Kabir’s spiritual message is available in his couplets, sakhies and ramainies. What Kabir advocated and said is outcome of his own spiritual knowledge and experience. He said God is all pervading. He permeates the whole universe as butter permeates the milk.
“ghee doodh mein ramit raha, vyapak sah hi thaur.” The fundamentalist pundits were advising the people for animal sacrifices to please their deities. Kabir advised the people to stop these sinful rituals. This is evident from his sakhi”
” kahe kabir eh pakhand bahutak jio satav,
Anbhau bhau na darse, jiyat na aapu rakhav”
He says, they do adharma in the name of dharma in ignorance. He said, it is not possible to earn ‘Puneya’ or goodness by the killing of animals. Mercy and forgiveness are the jewels of a spiritual soul. Kabir uses shock methods to arouse us from our ignorance and superstitions. Being a mystic saint he stressed for goodness of the heart to find God. He said it is no use to go to the temples or mosques to find God as they are made by the man himself. You should search for Him within your own body which is a gift of God and you will get him without the help of a priest or Qazi.
Kabir lived in the priest-ridden city of Benaras and there he battled against both Hindu and Muslim priests and exposed the hollowness of superstitious practices adopted by the people at that time. Saint said that we should search for the truth. He said truth is that which remains always and cannot be destroyed. Everything that perishes is false. He said we have not to travel far to reach the truth. It is in us already, only the path is blocked by our greed, lust, anger and egotism. The saint says when a stream is lost in Ganga then it becomes Ganga itself. Similarly by invoking God, a person is lost in Him and he needs not go anywhere else. He said that all the wealth of three worlds resides in the goodness of the heart. By truth he means the truth of God. He said that there is no happiness without truth. He also said that the water of Ganga is not more sacred than any other river and Benaras is no more holy than any other city. He also preached against the futility of pilgrimages and of taking bath in holy rivers. One of his couplets regarding his message is as under,
“nahaye dhoye kaya hua jo man mail na jaye,
Meen sada jal mein rahe dhoye baas na jaye”
He says we have to clean our heart not our body only. Fish always remain in water but even then its smell is not lost. By criticizing the false rituals he had to suffer the wrath of both Hindu priests and Mullas. Both of them complained the king Sikander Lodhi who ordered him to be killed. He was ordered to be put in the burning fire, to be drowned in Ganga by tying his hands and feet and was also put before a mad elephant but he survived every time. At last Sikander Lodhi came to know that Kabir is not an ordinary man but a man of God. So he begged his pardon. Kabir’s followings increased day by day and he had many disciples including some princes. Maharaja of Bandav Garh Shri Ram Singh and Kashi Naresh Birdev Singh were among his devotees.
In northern India no saint or reformer commands greater esteem and veneration than Kabir. His teachings are based on religious amity and brotherhood. He loved all, lived for all and was a spiritual and moral guide for all. He was a towering saint of Bhakti Movement and his divine hymns touched all human hearts alike. In fact the vani of Kabir is virtuous for all irrespective of his faith. The sacred Granth of Sikhism Guru Granth Sahib contains maximum number of 541 hymns. His sermons are a popular call for every human heart. There are three literary works on Kabir which occupy a place of honor in the numerous writings attributed to the saint. They are Kabir Bijak, Kabir Granthawali and Anurag Sagar in addition to his writings incorporated in Guru Granth Sahib. Kabir Bijak is the oldest granth on Kabir and its English translation has been done by late Shri K.C.Bhagat, a well known author of J&K. These works are sufficient to know about the personality and philosophy of Kabir. Nobel Laureate Rabinder Nath Tagore has translated his one hundred poems in English which were published in 1915. Literature on Kabir has also been translated in some foreign languages like Italian, French and English by some foreign authors.
For centuries Kabir has been an inspiration to a huge mass of people in India and is still living in faith of a large number of his followers. He is treated as living philosophy of life, death and salvation.
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