The Qalandariyya (reflections on an excellent video by Filip Holm, which I saw just two weeks after the Urs of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar)

About three weeks ago – between February 29 and March 3 – the annual celebrations of the Urs of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar were held in Sehwan, Sindh, Pakistan. I did  not find out about this until about two weeks later (the date on our calendar varies so much that it’s hard to keep track), but as has often happened in previous years (during the past 15 years or so that I have been aware of these matters), I wanted to do a new blog post related to this subject. This time, though, I also wanted to come up with something that was entirely different from the posts that I had done before.* Fortunately, within a day or two, quite by coincidence (I think), the perfect answer popped up on YouTube.  On March 16, much to my delight, a brand new video was posted from Filip Holm’s show, Let’s Talk Religion, entitled “The Counter-Culture, Lawless Muslim Mystics Who Drank Wine? / The Qalandariyya.”

So, now that I have watched that video – and greatly enjoyed it – I am going to tell you a little about the Qalandariyya – the group that included all the qalandars – based mostly on what I learned from Filip’s video. But first, I would like to say a few words about Filip, himself.

As I mentioned several months ago in my post about Farid Attar’s Sufi classic The Conference of the Birds, Filip Holm has an excellent show on YouTube that is centered on explanation and discussion of a variety of religions, sects, and theological-philosophical tendencies, but which particularly excels when he delves into his own academic specialty, Sufism.

By the way, Filip was not raised as a Sufi or Muslim, himself. He does have family roots in the Middle East (in Iraq), though he, himself, is Swedish. But he comes from a Christian family. It may be partly because he was not raised a Muslim or a Sufi that he never seems to assume that his viewers are coming to his show with any kind of religious knowledge in this area. (With all due respect, some people who were raised in the faith do seem to make that mistake.) Similarly, although he is an academic, he will never lapse into academic language that might confuse his YouTube viewers. He explains everything in a marvelously simple way, considering that he sometimes imparts some very complex ideas.

As I have mentioned before, I, myself, was raised without any religion and spent most of my life as an atheist, then an agnostic, and have only started to gravitate toward spiritual/religious (mainly pantheistic) beliefs sometime in my late 50s (I am now 62). So, as an outsider to both religion and academia, I really do appreciate that I find it so easy to learn from Filip about all these matters. (By the way, if you want to know more about my own spiritual orientation and nonexistent “religious” heritage, you can also find that at the end of the Conference of the Birds post. But I don’t want to get too much onto that tangent here.)

And now, since I have explained what a beginner I am, I hope readers will forgive me if any of my own explanation of the ideas and history conveyed by Filip in his video might at any time seem a little too simple or inaccurate. Probably, people will get a more accurate picture by watching Filip’s video directly. But I wanted to do a writeup here because I feel that it really has a place in this blog. I have touched upon the legends of the qalandars so much in a superficial way via words and clips related to films and music, that I find it very satisfying now to be able to write a few things here about their history and ideas.

Filip’s video centers on the Qalandariyya as their movement developed in Syria (first) but, more centrally, in Iran. It is among the Persians that the Qalandariyya really seemed to take root. But these were not people who were always firmly geographically rooted, since they were very inclined to travel throughout their lives. (In the subtitles to some qawwalis that I have watched, I have seen them referred to as “wanderers.”) This is why qalandars also ended up gaining a strong presence in South Asia. And Filip does touch upon the presence of qalandars in North Indian music and culture, mentioning Amir Khusrau and the famous, relatively contemporary (though now deceased) Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. (He does not at all make this Indian/Pakistani cultural history the center of his program, but I was happy to see him finally mention it at one point, since that is my own main place of reference – and source of great aesthetic inspiration, too.)

Maybe the real, key word in the title of this video is “Counterculture.” (Incidentally, although that word is hyphenated in the video subtitle, I never feel that it should be – maybe because I’m American? Anyway, I will be typing it without a hyphen from this point on.) It probably is clear to most people who have encountered qalandars in art, literature, or song lyrics/poetry that they were a counterculture, going against accepted norms of their contemporary society and Islam, itself. A lot of their seemingly contrary behavior, as Filip points out, was a deliberate effort on their part to draw a kind of disdain to themselves. This was their way of destroying the ego (referred to in the original Arabic literature as the “nafs”). The destruction of the ego is referred to/translated as annihilation (from the original Arabic word “fana”) and was considered an important part of the Sufis’ spiritual journey toward fully understanding God. But the qalandars believed that by being outwardly virtuous in their appearances and drawing praise for superficially pious conduct, they would likely only inflate the ego that they sought to destroy. So they defied concepts of what normal people would consider to be a good citizen or Mulsim in their appearances (by dressing in rags or odd-looking animal skins or sometimes wearing almost nothing and sometimes – though we don’t see this as much in, say, film depictions – by shaving their heads and beards). In addition to that, they sometimes smoked hashish and drank wine. (“Wine” is referred to in a lot of Sufi poetry, but this is as a metaphor for spiritual intoxication. Muslims were never actually encouraged to go to the taverns and drink wine.) They also did not form/raise families as many a good Mulsim was expected to do. Actually, many remained celibate, which was in line with the greater level of asceticism that they normally pursued. At a deeper level, hidden from their superficial appearances to others, they were more pious and more ascetic than anyone, but they could not let themselves be seen for it – and likely praised.

Taking a good look at all of this from a contemporary perspective, it actually – and maybe somewhat surprisingly – makes a lot of sense. (And here, I am adding my own observations and interpretations – it is not something that Filip relates.) Understanding that the ego as observed in the Sufi/spiritual context might be a little different from the ego in the context of what we understand in contemporary society (with our contemporary knowledge coming from a different kind of religion known as psychology), the potential problems that the ego present are still basically the same. In the present society, especially in public discourse revolving around politics (but in other areas too), there seems to be a strong tendency among many people toward what is known as “virtue signaling.” This is a tactic that normally feeds the ego, and often the most egotistical do-gooders make a point of letting everyone know how good they are – whether it is by showing what good deeds they are doing or just (maybe more often) by showing how much they hold the “best” – that is, most socially sanctioned – opinions and beliefs. This is the kind of tendency that might feed the most extreme kind of egotism, the psychological condition that we call “narcissism.” But the Qalandariyya – who went so far as to bring disdain upon themselves in order to avoid drawing attention to their virtues – seem to have been the complete antithesis of virtue signalers.

The Qalandariyya are also pertinent in the contemporary context just from being – as mentioned before – a counterculture. As Filip mentioned, in addition to the reasons related to their spiritual quest to destroy the ego, they probably developed (at a more basic level) as a plain reaction to the established social prescriptions in Islam. At a deeper level, they were not at all interested in the real hedonism pursued in more contemporary time by, say, hippies, but because of the appearances that they cultivated in opposition to accepted society, they apparently kind of looked like hippies, at least sometimes. (Plus, of course, there was that smoking of the hashish…) The similarity probably did not escape people working within the popular culture of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, as evidenced by the way qalandars are depicted in South Asian films from the era. Especially in certain Pakistani movies (some of which are sources of clips that I have shared here), the qalandars really do look like hippies of the (then-)present day.

There is something else that the qalandars have in common with hippies and other people in modern counterculture(s): As Filip pointed out, they have often been depicted with musical instruments in their hands. Music was important to Sufis in general, but the qalandars’ emphasis on walking around with musical instruments might also have been an outgrowth of their rebellion against orthodox Muslim prescriptions about accepted behavior, since there was a prevailing form of Islam that discouraged and looked down upon music. For that reason, it was another way that the Qalandariyya made sure that they would attract disdain. (As we know, these opposing attitudes toward music, corresponding to different forms of Islam, still exist in the current day, sometimes resulting in unfortunate repression and violence, with Sufis often being the victims.)

But it is probably because of the qalandars’ involvement in music that so much poetry that is sung along to great music refers to them. It seems that in spite of themselves, the Qalandariyya inspired a lot of praise in qawwalis and Sufi kalams. Of course, it is also only through music that so many of us first heard about the qalandars, and it is because of music and film references that they have become a favorite subject in this blog.

————————————————————-

* The most extensive posts related to this subject that I have written previously are:

Some Favorite Noor Jehan Film Songs Related to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (and some other Qalandars too),

Celebrating the Urs of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, Part I: The Song, and

Celebrating the Urs of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, Part II: The Festival

———————————————————-

P.S. I am aware that in my last post, I suggested that within a month or so, I would write a post about Kathak vs. Flamenco. I am sorry that I broke another promise, but I felt that the Qalandariyya took precedence right now. But I will do that soon!