Autobiography of a Forgotten Indian

Seven hundred years before Partition, four centuries before the first Englishman landed at Surat, the identity of the subcontinent's people -- that wispy and nebulous apparition -- was given comprehensive shape and definition in one magical era.

The years have eroded the authority of that definition. Is it important, in days when Kashmir and Kargil alone evoke strong discourse among the people of India and Pakistan, that we revisit that moment of clarity? By way of justification, then.

Our story is set in 13th century Delhi, in the area now known as Nizamuddin, named after the dargah of the Sufi also referred to as Mehboob-é-Elahi, Nizamuddin Awliya.

The saint lies buried next to the man he called the Turk, his greatest disciple. Poet, musician, inventor, philosopher, linguist. Amir Khusro Dehlavi's name is synonymous with the culture of the subcontinent. Without him, our music would sound different, it would be played on different instruments, and it would be sung in another language. Khusro was musician in the court of seven kings, from Malik Chajju to Mohammed bin Tughlaq.

Many legends surround Khusro: that he split the gonging, resonating pakhavaj and invented the tabla; that he gave Hindustani music its voice and vocabulary after authoring its first formal raag, the Yaman-Kalyan; that he influenced Hazrat Nizamuddin Awliya to miraculously cure Mian Samat, a deaf-mute boy who later became head of Hindustani music's first gharana, the Qawwal Bachche. These legends are driven by belief in the absence of documentation.
On a few facts there is no dispute. Khusro blended Persian, the language of the court, with Bhojpuri, the language of the people, and wrote his poetry and songs and riddles in what he called Hindvi, the precursor to modern Hindi and Urdu.

He took the sufism of the Chistiya Silsila and made it sing, inventing qawwali. He modified the ancient Indian tradition of Dhrupad, adding Persian beat and melody. From the Hindu bhajan he borrowed the concept of directly addressing God in prayer-song with a chorus, his singers clapped in accompaniment as angels are believed to do when enlightened souls approach heaven. His music became immensely popular with Hindus and Muslims, receiving patronage in the courts of kings of both religions.

The qawwal stream generated other forms over time, incorporating local tradition and morphing in length and structure till it came to totally dominate most northern traditions and made them one: Khayal, or Hindustani classical as we now know it.

His disciples and their descendants sang his music in the court of every Delhi ruler, down to Tanras Khan 'Dasnewala', singer in the court of Bahadur Shah 'Zafar', last Mughal emperor of India. Khusro's tradition has passed unbroken across seven centuries and thirty generations. Meraj Ahmed 'Nizami', current head of the Qawwal Bachche and guardian of the tomb of Nizamuddin Awliya, still sings in Delhi; the Warisi brothers, descendants of Tanras Khan Dasnewala, look for work in Hyderabad.

Qawwal's greatest modern exponent, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, was himself the last of a 600-year old musical tradition that was rooted in religion but outgrew it to become part of a nation's identity.

Both Amir Khusro and Nizamuddin Awliya scorned organised religion, believing that the clergy was more interested in temporal power than in God.

A fortnight after Eid-ul-Fitr falls the Urs of Amir Khusro. As many Hindus attend the celebrations at Nizamuddin as Muslims. It is very unlikely that they do so to safeguard India's secular tradition; perhaps they do so because it is natural to celebrate the life of a man who defined, through his love of God and music and through his genius, our culture and our history.

It is unclear how the legacy of Amir Khusro, Islamic music and Chistiya Sufism in India was divided in 1947. If indeed Pakistan be its true inheritor, perhaps it should be loaned for the 900th birth anniversary of the Khwaja Garib Nawaz which falls next year.