Friday, February 05, 2016

Sunder Munderiye

  This perhaps has been one of the most captivating articles I've read (http://scroll.in/article/801803/lohri-legends-the-tale-of-abdullah-khan-dullah-bhatti-the-punjabi-who-led-a-revolt-against-akbar)

  The Lohri song Sunder Munderiye that people in Punjab sing with such zest and happiness is a song about Rai Abdullah Khan Bhatti (AKA Dullah Bhatti) who was a Muslim Rajput Bhatti, who lived his life fiercely revolting against the Mughals, and was ultimately even executed by them.  History is complicated but Punjabi pop numbers aren't, apparently they've recently made a song about Dullah Bhatti portraying him as a Sikh. Nothing wrong with portraying him as Sikh if he really was but he was Muslim! 

 In today's world we are trained to see things in black and white  and side with an opinion (even if it means deliberately hiding the blacks and hyping the whites of the opinions we side with). I know of many people who generally hate Muslims in general but celebrate Lohri with great fervour and possibly do not know who Dullah Bhatti was. Like I said history is complex, to tell someone today that the hero they're singing about was a Muslim, Rajput and a Bhatti will perplex anyone (for according to us today that appears to be an admixture of 3 different religions. So maybe those times were more complex, yet simpler (i.e. You could be a Rajput, a Muslim and a Bhatti at the same time...apparently Bhatti is derived from the name of a place, now in Pakistan).

  Anyway, I feel sad for Dullah Bhatti, he's no more than a popular folk song that people don't know about. The article also mentions that since Pakistanis feel a deep kinship towards the Mughals (for the same reasons that many Indians dislike them; which again is sad for the Mughals), they don't really talk much about Dullah Bhatti, who although a Muslim, was against the Mughals. So basically nobody really knows him much. Well apparently Lohri is celebrated in the memory of his generosity for the poor.

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