• Bond’s project, “Singing Islam: Sufi Music and Socio-religious Change on India’s Western Border” analyzes how the history and current practice of Sindhi Sufi music in Kachchh relate to socio-religious transformations

Brian Bond, Visiting Lecturer University of California, Berkeley, first discovered his love for music when he was 12 years old, a passion that has persisted ever since. In fact, it was Bond’s lifelong admiration for the Beatles that sparked his interest in South Asian music, a topic he has continued to explore as a 2023 ACLS Susan McClary and Robert Walser Fellow.

Captivated by the Sufi musical performances of Pakistani singers Abida Parveen and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as an undergraduate student at Rutgers University, Bond was eager to learn more about Sindhi Sufi musical culture and histories of interreligious music in western India.

“My eventual focus on Sindhi Sufi music was motivated by the fact that I was deeply moved by the music and wanted to learn more about the ethical and spiritual import of the metaphorical Sufi poetry that is at this music’s core,” Bond said. “When I discovered that there are singers in Kachchh, Gujarat–on India’s western border, adjacent to the Sindh province of Pakistan -who also perform this music, I became very curious about the political implications and symbolic weight of their ongoing transborder connections with musicians and listeners in Pakistan.”

Through the generous support of Susan McClary and Robert Walser, the ACLS Susan McClary and Robert Walser Fellowship in Music Studies is awarded to scholars like Bond who are conducting exceptional research in musicology. The award is part of the ACLS Fellowship Program, which supports outstanding scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, and since 2021 has been awarded to untenured scholars who have earned a PhD within eight years of their application.

Bond’s project, “Singing Islam: Sufi Music and Socio-religious Change on India’s Western Border” analyzes how the history and current practice of Sindhi Sufi music in Kachchh relate to socio-religious transformations that have taken place there since the 1970s. Despite the tensions between a predominately Hindu India and a majority Muslim Pakistan that have persisted for decades, Bond explores how Sindhi Sufi music and poetry have created a space of interreligious sociality in Kachchh.

The project explores two music genres and one melodic poetry recitation genre associated with the eighteenth-century Sindhi poet and Saint Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai. Bond considers many elements of Sindhi Sufi music including how Sufi performances spread religious and ethical teachings in rural Muslim communities, the shared concepts between Hindus and Muslims that reinforced interreligious music making, the transborder and transregional connections created by music, and the reasons why Islamic reformists have opposed Muslim music-making.

“I want to demonstrate the centrality of musical practice and poetic knowledge to localized Islam in western India,” Bond said. “I am also interested in highlighting positive forms of interreligious interaction through musical practice, which I believe is deeply relevant to socio-religious politics in contemporary India.”

Bond is now turning his project’s work into a monograph based on research he conducted in western India and southeastern Pakistan from 2014 to 2022. He says he applied to the ACLS Fellowship Program because it would allow him to focus solely on his book project.

“This fellowship has been indispensable to moving this project forward,” he explained. “I have been teaching intermittently as a visiting lecturer at University of California, Berkeley but have not secured a tenure-track job. The fellowship has provided me with the time, funds, and motivation to advance this project.”

Read: Introducing Sindhi Folk Artists of Kutch 

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Courtesy: American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) posted on Feb 29, 2024

The post An American Scholar Studies Sindhi Sufi Music in Western India first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zulfiqar Ali Kalhoro

Sindh is a land of Sufis, saints, mystics, myths, mysteries and heroes (soorma). Many tales of generosity and bravery of men are narrated by roving minstrels in different towns and villages of Sindh. But equally, there is a long list of generous, brave, patriotic and pious women whose names are still preserved in the memories of oral historians, poets and sometime even painted on walls of funerary monuments in Sindh.

In Tharparkar, Badin, Tando Muhammad Khan and many other districts of Sindh, one hears the names and tales of many brave women.

In Nagarparkar, in 1948, Mai Shori killed a police superintendent when the latter arrested her husband on false charges and refused to give him bail despite several pleas by Mai Shori. Some of the poets of Nagarparkar composed poetry on the bravery of Mai Shori – that in a male-dominated society nobody dared save and help her husband. She fought for her husband alone and eventually killed the police officer. In other villages of Tharparkar, I was told tales of the generosity of women. One such woman was Mai Maan Bai Jhinjhan, who was married to a Sameja noble of a village in Chachro taluka. Lend has it that one day Colonel Tyrwhitt, a British army officer, halted in the village of Mai Maan Bai, who served him and his soldiers lunch. Colonel Tyrwhitt was impressed by her generosity and asked if there was anything she needed. Mai Maan Bai asked that a tank/pond be dug in the village. Colonel Tyrwhitt ordered his men to dig a tar (tank) which came to be named after Mai Maan Bai as ‘Tar Mai Man Bai’ and is located 18 km east of Chachro taluka. Colonel Tyrwhitt also bestowed on her one hundred acres of land.

Some royal Kalhora and Talpur women earned accolades for their welfare works. Mai Jaman, wife of Mian Noor Muhammad Kalhoro (1719-1753) is believed to have excavated many wells and built mosques. Eight mosques of Mai Jaman which withstood the vagaries of weather are all located in Sanghar district. Mai Khairi, the mother of Mir Fateh Ali Khan Talpur, the founder of the Talpur dynasty in Sindh, also commissioned a few mosques which are located in Hyderabad and Nasarpur. Mai Chagli, the wife of Pahar Khan Burfat and the mother of Izzatyar Khan Burfat, an advisor to MianGhulam Shah Kalhoro (1757-1772), managed the affairs of Lasbela state when her husband died – until she was driven away by the Jam of Lasbela. She settled in Kotri where today both her own tomb and that of her son Malik Izzatyar are located.

The list of great Sindhi women is very long but here I tend to discuss the Jami mosque which is believed to have been built by Bibi Lal, a pious Syed women who devoted all her life to devotional activities – reciting the Holy Quran and offering prayers. She was an unmarried Sufi saint who always remained engrossed in worship. She used to go to the annual festival of Sajan Sawai once a year.

Like the pious Bibi Lal, there are many other Sindhi Sufi women whose names come first before any veneration of their male mentors – a phenomenon that sometimes transcends religious boundaries

The Jami mosque of Bibi Lal breaks the skylines of Dando town, which lies 15 km east of Tando Ghulam Hyder in the district of Tando Muhammad Khan. The mosque was built in 1957 as the inscription on the gate of the mosque bears both the name of the builder and date of the construction. Bibi Lal belongs to eminent Syed family of Dando. This family of Syeds produced many eminent Sufis; the most prominent is Sajan Sawai, whose shrine is located 6 km southeast of Dando town. Sajan Sawai was an eminent deputy (khalifa) of Makhdoom Nuh of Hala. The grave of Bibi Lal is a half a kilometer south of Sajan Sawai’s shrine at the graveyard of Pinio Kapri. Pinio Kapri was the grandson of Sajan Sawai, a claim which seems to be disputed as the term Kapri is associated with one of the Hindu renunciatory orders. It is likely that he was later converted by Sajan Sawai and enrolled as his disciple. According to a popular hagiography of Pinio Kapri, he seemed to have engaged in many religious discourses with Hindu holy men – Swami Baba Ram, Swami Baba Narain Das and others, reflecting a syncretic tinge in the story. I will discuss this story of Pinio Kapri and Hindu ascetics in another article.

Bibi Lal died at the age of 65 and was buried near the tomb of Pinio Kapri. The grave of Bibi Lal lies northeast of the tomb of Pinio Kapri. The grave exists inside the wall enclosure. There are two graves in the wall enclosure, in fact. As one enters the enclosure, one can see her grave on the right, which is venerated by both men and women of the area.

The Jamia mosque of Bibi Lal is a three-domed structure with four minarets rising from the thick walls. The main gate of the mosque, which is decorated with painting and inscriptions, opens to a courtyard. The three arched-entrance of the mosque opens to an antechamber further leading to the main prayer hall. The prayer hall is divided into a nave and aisles that are spanned with hemispherical domes. This is one of the most impressive and splendid mosques in the whole district of Tando Muhammad Khan. Formerly, the façade of mosque was decorated with glazed blue tiles from Hala and Nasarpur. The interior of the mosque was adorned with floral and geometric designs. All this is gone now, as the mosque was renovated in 2008. Now, china ceramics and glasswork decorate the exterior partially. The interior of the mosque completely decorated with glasswork

In the male dominated society of Pakistan in general and Sindh in particular, where a woman’s voice is almost always left unheard, these monuments speak volumes of the richness of our history. Like the pious Bibi Lal, there are many other Sindhi Sufi women whose names come first before any veneration of their male mentors – a phenomenon that sometimes transcends religious boundaries.

Mai Noori, an “untouchable” woman of the Hindu Shikari caste, was a very dear disciple of Rajsen Soomrani, a Suhrawardi saint in Nindo, Badin. It is still obligatory for Hindu Rabari devotees and Muslim disciples to first pay salutations to Mai Noori and then to her mentor Rajsen Soomrani.

Mai Bhambi was another Muslim woman who became an eminent disciple of Jarkas Dinani, a Suhrawardi saint, whose shrine lies 4 km from Pangrio in Golarchi taluka. We must mention here also Mai Kuni, who was a female disciple of Ram Jago in Umarkot district – whose shrine lies 2 km south of Ram Jago’s shrine.

And so, associated with these monuments, the names of Bibi Lal and many other Sindhi Sufi women still live on in monuments, memories and poetry of the mystics of Sindh.

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The author is an anthropologist and the head of the department of Development Studies at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), Islamabad

Courtesy: The Friday Times Lahore

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