Fakir Lalon Shah

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Fakir Lalon Shah (Bangla: ফকির লালন সাঁই), also known as Lalon Shah (c. 1774–1890), was a Bengali philosopher poet. His poetry, articulated in songs, are considered classics of the Bangla language. Fakir Lalon Shah lived in the village of Cheuria in the area known as Nadia in the Bengal Presidency of British India, corresponding to the district of Kushtia in present-day Bangladesh.

Lalon left no trace of his birth or his 'origin' and remained silent about his past, fearing that he would be cast into class, caste or communal identities by a fragmented and hierarchical society. Despite this silence on his origins, communal appropriation of this great politico-philosophical figure has created a controversy regarding whether he is 'Muslim' or a 'Hindu' -- a 'sufi' or a follower 'bhakti' tradition—a 'baul' or a 'fakir', etc. He is none, as he always strove to go beyond all politics of identities. Lalon sang, “People ask if Lalon Fakir is a Hindu or a Mussalman. Lalon says he himself doesn’t know who he is.”
Lalon does not fit into the construction of the so called 'bauls' or 'fakirs' as a mystical or spiritual types who deny all worldly affairs in desperate search for a mystical ecstasy of the soul. Such construction is very elite, middle class, and premised on the divide between 'modern' and 'spiritual' world. It also conveniently ignores the political and social aspects of Bengal's spiritual movements and depoliticizes the transformative role of 'bhakti' or 'sufi' traditions. This role is still continued and performed by the poet-singers and philosophers in oral traditions of Bangladesh, a cultural reality of Bangladesh that partly explains the emergence of Bangladesh with distinct identity from Pakistan back in 1971. Depicting Lalon as 'baul shomrat' (the Emperor of the Bauls) as projected by elite marginalizes Lalon as a person belonging to a peripheral movement, an outcast, as if he is not a living presence and increasingly occupying the central cultural, intellectual and political space in both side of the border between Bangladesh and India (West Bengal). More on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lalon











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