Roop Kunwar Kumari
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. Readers will be able to edit existing articles and post new articles directly |
Roop Kunwar Kumari
By Intizar Hussain
I have before me a collection of Munqabats and marsiyas composed by Roop Kunvar Kumari. It may be seen as a new kind of Bhakti poetry where two religious sensibilities appear mixing in each other the way sugar dissolves in the milk.
But who was Roop Kunvar Kumari. Did she really exist or is she just a figment of popular imagination nurtured by the Indo-Muslim culture.
This devotional poetry came as a pleasant surprise for Muharram mourners, who were all praise for Roop Kumari. The circles of marsiya writers felt intrigued wondering who this Hindu lady is. So many among them just refused to believe that there was ever such a soul. Late Nasim Amrohvi was foremost in expressing his disbelief in this respect. When his attention was drawn to a marsiya believed to have been written by her, he promptly replied that Roop Kumari is an imaginary being while the marsiya referred to has in fact been written by her so-called ustad Fazal Rasool.
But the researchers in the field of marsiya were not going to be misled by such verdicts based more on whims than on any convincing proof. They remained seriously engaged in their research, determined to solve the mystery of this controversial figure. Their researches bore fruit as they succeeded, through a gradual process, in finding proofs of the actual existence of such a Hindu female marsiya writer.
And now Dr Syed Taqi Hayder Abdi has come out with the fruitful results of his own research. He tells us about the hand written manuscripts of Roop Kumari’s marsiyas and Munqabats and allied papers which he has dug out from his own store of books and manuscripts. He talks of a manuscript containing Roop Kumari’s five marsiyas along with a few salams, qitats, and mukhammas, most of whom, say about 60 per cent, written in her own hand-writing. And he adds that a few of these writings bear the evidence of correction made by Fazal Rasool. In addition these researched papers include a number of letters written by Fazal Rasool.
On the basis of these newly dug out manuscripts, Dr Taqi has brought out a collection of Roop Kumari’s devotional verse. Along with her marsiyas and munqabats, we find here a brief biographical account of her, a survey of her works, and a discussion with reference to the writings of scholars in this respect.
Dr Taqi has expressed his unhappiness at the attitude of those marsiya writers and scholars who helped in creating an atmosphere of doubt about the physical existence of Roop Kumari. He, in particular, has condemned the attitude of late Nasim Amrohvi, who, according to him, passed his verdict without caring to make some enquiry before giving air to his disbelief.
If Roop Kumari provoked a sense of curiosity and suspicion in the circle of marsiya writers and scholars, it was perhaps for the reason that she was perhaps the first Hindu female attempting to write marsiya and expressing her ardent devotion to Hazrat Ali and Imam Husain, otherwise we have in Urdu a long tradition of marsiyas written by Hindu poets. We can also trace this trend in Punjabi, which provides one such example in the form of a bara-masa written with reference to Karbala by Milkhi Ram.
Kalidas Gupta Raza, who himself made some attempts in the form of marsiya, had tried to compile an account of Hindu marsiya writers. I have before me Dr Zamir Akhtar’s Nawadirat-i-marsiya Nigari where he talks of a fine marsiya, Dayari-i-Sham Main Jab Qaidiyon Kauu Sham Hui written by Raja Chandu Lal Shadan. Mirza Jafar Husain in his book Qadeem Lucknow ki Akhri Bahar tells us about two Hindu taziadars Munshi Sarjoo Prashad Nigam and Ramji Mal, who had themselves composed marsiyas to be recited on the occasion of their tazia procession.
But Roop Kumari appears standing distinguished from all these Hindu marsiya writers. And it is not simply because of her being a female, which provoked a curiosity mixed with a sense of attraction about her. It is rather the peculiarity of her devotion to the personalities of Hazrat Ali and Imam Husain and its expression in an individualities way, which imparts to her marsiyas a flavour very different from the one we find in Muslim poets’ marsiyas and in her co-religionists’ marsiyas. This peculiarity may be defined in terms of her Bhakti sensibility, which she has inherited from her own religious tradition.
Hindu writers in general when writing marsiya try to identify themselves completely with that mode of devotional feeling and its allied expression which is associated with marsiya and which bears the stamp of Arab Iranian Islamic culture with a mix of Indian sensibility, Roop Kumari is seen disowning her Hindu beliefs which a Hindu marsiya writer will not like to do. But, at the same time, she stubbornly sticks to what she has received and absorbed on a cultural level from her Hindu tradition. So she sees no harm in expressing her devotion to Imams in terms borrowed from her Hindu background. Rather she relishes in calling Hazrat Ali a rishi, or a devote or simply maharaj and saying Najaf Hamaray Liyai Harduar-au-Kashi Hai.
So we see in her marsiyas an intermixture of two cultural idioms pointing out to an intermixture of two cultural sensibilities.
