[In the following essay, Ezekiel explores the daring simplicity of Kabīr's style and the directness and vigor with which he set forth his unorthodox ideas.]

Both Muslims and Hindus will go to hell,
With Qazis and Brahmins leading them there.
Both deserve nothing better.

Kabir

There is probably no Indian author whose verses are more on the lips of North India than those of Kabir, unless it be Tulsidas.

Rev. Keay

No Indian Saint has displayed such strength of language, such vitality, such ruggedness and down-to-earth assertion of facts and views as the weaver Saint of Benaras. This serene and saintly personality breathes scorn and disgust, uses frowns and sneers, generates thunder and wrath—all so contrary to his inward peace and compassion towards erring humanity. They are his weapons; not part of his mental make-up.

Banter, ridicule, sarcasm, wit and humour—these are the weapons he wields! Nor does he hesitate to hit straight-from-the-shoulder, hitting hard, ceaselessly and without stop, till the face of false piety and hypocrisy is battered out of shape and exposed to the view of the general public for general laughter.

He summons the entire zoo to portray human beings of different sorts. Donkeys and dogs, foxes and wolves, snakes and vipers, lions and tigers, fishes and fowls, camels and elephants, cranes and herons, swine and scorpions—march past before us as representations of human beings, who thus properly labelled, carry the labels wherever they go—for the labels stick so fast in the reader's mind that nothing can remove or destroy them.

Kabir specialises in deflation—deflation of our mind, our ego. He deflates the high and mighty and shows them their proper place both on this earth and in the nether worlds.

Royalties and aristocracies, mighty mansions and magnificent palaces lie in dust before his withering banter. He punctures the pretensions of the pious, pierces holes in the learning of the learned, atrophies the ambitions of the wealthy, grinds to dust the pride of youth and beauty, files and chisels the wrath of the haughty, crushes the showmanship of the sadhus and fakirs, and diminishes the height of yogis and yogeshwars.

Above all, he is concerned with the ordinary man, the landless labourer and the hand-to-mouth peasant who toils from morn to night in sweltering heat and blistering cold, but does not have food enough to fill his empty stomach when alive, and cloth enough to cover his nakedness when dead.

He sees with his own eyes how long and how deeply the peasant suffers—suffers at the hands of his exploiters and at the hands of his spiritual leaders. He has nothing but compassion for the poor.

But mere compassion would not have abolished their spiritual subjection. And so he narrates interesting stories to expose what simpletons they are, and how they are fooled and humbugged by the charlatans; defrauded and cheated by the guardian angels of temples; blinded and hoodwinked by cheats and thugs; bluffed and bamboozled by highwaymen of the spiritual path.

These stories are very simple and naive, but very easy to understand and so easy to remember. The proud intellectual may not think much of them, but they remain in the mind and pierce the heart like an arrow.

They project the spiritual purpose of life; they pitch and toss the spiritual idea that keeps working in the mind; they heave aside age-old traditions and unthinking submission to the past. In that sense Kabir is a most daring modernist; and the modernist of today seems to be tattered and out-of-date before him.

Within the range of reason, Kabir is a most uncompromising rationalist. In the intellectual field, he is the most clear-brained intellectual. Among the learned, he is the most learned—though he is ignorant of the alphabets. He quotes the Shastras, the Puranas and the Vedas with an authority before which the learned shiver and the traders in holy lore call for the hangman's rope.

Kabir's songs seek nobody's approbation. They seek no sanction, ask for no approval, search for no popularity, invite no commendation, crave no compliment. They stand independent of these considerations, and they constitute the most uninhibited literature, the freest of free writing ever produced by a Saint. They are the most fearless of fearless hymns, for they launch assaults on the very foundations of institutional religion and the self-appointed customs officers of the Gates of Heaven.

Kabir wields the scalpel and the forceps with the dexterity of a skilled surgeon. He manipulates the lancet and the knife with the facility of a specialist out to lay bare the putrefication within us. “Are you old and respectable?” he asks, and replies, “But your lustful hunger has sharpened, not diminished, with age, and hardly makes you worthy of respect.” “Have you abandoned the world?” he asks, and replies, “But your mind clings to the worldly dross with rapacious greed and nauseating egotism.”

He divests us of our affectations, uncovers our prudery, lays bare our charlatanism, undrapes our moral skeleton to expose its death-like ugliness, and he slits open our skin-deep beauty to reveal the sores within.

The most daring of Kabir's songs are those that uncover the true nature of the gods and goddesses we worship.

“Who are these gods?” he asks, and replies that “their prime purpose is to keep us away from the Lord, and you go to them for salvation.” “Who are these gods?” he asks again, and quotes the Puranas to prove their many delinquencies. He recalls the stories of their hysterical fits of temper unworthy of any cultured gentleman; their cunning devices of greed that surpass the records of fraudulent company promoters and practised racketeers; their unquenchable ego that would put to shame dictators and ‘conquerors of the world’; their crimes of lust—kidnapping, adultery, fornication, rape, incest—crimes that would rock a civilised society if committed by men at the top, crimes that would invite heavy sentences of imprisonment if committed by any ordinary mortal and condemn him for life as unworthy of decent company.

“How can these gods, themselves wallowing in passions, free you from their fury?” he asks. “How can these gods, themselves submerged in suffering, redeem you from its anguish? How can these gods, themselves beset with gnawing anxiety, liberate you from its distractions? How can these gods, themselves encompassed by fear, release you from its stranglehold? How can these gods, bound hands and feet to Duality, free you from Illusion? How can these gods, themselves entangled in transmigration, deliver you from the Eternal Wheel?”

Kabir uses the language of the common man, simple, direct, terse, pithy. Metaphors and similies drawn from the life of the villager, pour out with an ease and beauty that amaze the reader. His simple figures of speech carry conviction where pages of argument would be unconvincing. The precision with which he conveys profound ideas and the simplicity with which he propounds the Eternal Truth, remain the crowning glory of Indian bhakti (devotional) literature. His plays on words and elliptical structures are such as only disciples of mystics can understand.

The Bijaks constitute the most authentic works of Kabir. They are written in Eastern Uttar Pradesh Hindi, for he himself writes, “My speech is of the east.” It is a dialect of Hindi somewhat different from the Hindi used in Western Uttar Pradesh, Bihar or Rajasthan. The name Bijak needs explanation.

A practice prevailed during Kabir's days of burying gold and silver and other valuables in some secret place which was not known to anybody except the master of the house. A chart of how to locate the place was made, sealed and handed over to the inheritor of the treasure. The chart itself was made in a mysterious language which only some members of the family could unravel. This chart was known as a ‘bijak’. The Bijaks of Kabir are, therefore, a document which discloses the way to Spiritual Treasure only to those initiated. ‘Bijak’ also means essence or invoice, and Kabir's Bijaks are an essence or invoice of spiritual teachings.

Kabir's poems contain a number of words of Arabic and Turkish origin; words which were current in those days. He also uses some words and phrases which only the common man from Benaras and surrounding areas can appreciate. He is no purist and is concerned only with driving his teachings home.

Kabir himself did not write a single line. He was utterly illiterate and says, “I have never touched ink to paper.” All his songs were written down by his immediate followers, some during his life-time, and many a little later. He resorted to the poetical form of expression whenever any question on a spiritual subject was put to him. This method was more effective than an explanation in prose. The rhythm and terseness of the language made it easier to remember the teachings, so concise, so simple and so clear.

Kabir's poetical collection runs into some thousands of verses. Yet he was not a poet in the ordinary sense of the word. He did not sit down to compose his poems. They were extempore expositions. Nor was he bound by any poetical technique. He invented his own metre, or rather a variety of metres, each suited to the occasion. To give first importance to him as a poet and second to his teachings is to mistake the means for the end.

Kabir was a pioneer in using Hindi, instead of Sanskrit, for conveying spiritual knowledge. In doing so, he and other Saints of the time had to face fierce opposition. Just as in medieval Europe, Latin was the church language and Latin the language of spiritual books, so in India we were wedded to Sanskrit. Just as the prayers and services were conducted in Latin in Roman Catholic churches, so was Sanskrit used in India. And just as the Protestant Church had to wage a struggle to introduce the national languages of various countries for spiritual books and prayers, so also had medieval Indian Saints to face opposition in introducing the use of regional languages. But Kabir was no anti-Sanskritist. It was all a matter of taking a practical view of things. The masses did not know Sanskrit; nor did he.

The exact texts of the Bijaks vary from region to region. This needs to be explained. No printing presses then existed and every copy of the Bijaks had to be written by hand. As a result, copyists of the Bijaks in Western Uttar Pradesh, the Punjab, Rajasthan and Bihar have sometimes replaced original words with their own regional words, but these copies are faithful to the original in maintaining the meaning and purpose of the songs. These changes are verbal and none has resorted to distortion.

There are copies of Bijaks that belong to another category. As has happened in the case of all medieval Indian Saints, a number of forged songs composed long after Kabir had passed away are also to be found; but their language is different and they propound thoughts and ideas contrary to the teachings of Kabir.

Many songs are also composed by genuine disciples of Kabir in the name of their Master and are consistent with his teachings. This is done out of sheer love for the Master; but their language is somewhat different and more modern, and Kabir's terseness and figures of speech are either not found in them at all or are far less effective. These can be easily distinguished from the original poems.

The practice of disciples writing in the name of their Master is by no means rare. Everything that a good disciple does is done in the name of his Master. The poems written by the successors of Guru Nanak and included in the Granth Sahib are written in the name of Guru Nanak. These cannot be called forgeries. They are the product of love for Guru Nanak, with whom succeeding Gurus had completely identified themselves.

The genuine poems of Kabir can be distinguished from the real forgeries by the facts that:

1. Kabir condemns idolatry, ascetism, rituals and outward forms of worship as useless for salvation.

2. Kabir emphasises the need for a Guru to pursue the higher path, and gives fixed and unalterable qualifications of a Guru.

3. Kabir opposes the caste system and never speaks of the Brahmins or any other caste as especially holy.

4. Kabir does not accept the Vedas and the Quran as the highest revelations.

5. Kabir stands for complete vegetarianism and against the use of drugs and drinks.

Any poems not consistent with these teachings can be easily classed as the works of someone other than Kabir.

In this respect Kabir is lucky. He has largely escaped from the forgeries that go contrary to his teachings. Many other Saints have been less fortunate. In the name of Tukaram, for example, poems have been composed in which the caste systems and the Brahmins, rites and rituals and outward forms of worship are lauded to the sky and sometimes placed in close juxtaposition with poems condemning all these. Obviously, they are shameless and unscrupulous forgeries committed by supporters of religious vested interests.

The Rev. F. E. Keay considers that the collection of Kabir's poems in the Granth Sahib are not “so authoritative as those in the Bijaks”, but he himself in practice refutes the idea by quoting mostly from the Granth Sahib in his chapter on “Historical Kabir”, and from other sources in the chapter on “Legendary Kabir”. The collection of Kabir's poems in the Granth Sahib may have, in some cases, local words to suit the Punjabi readers, but there can be no doubt about their genuineness. They have been incorporated in the Granth Sahib by Perfect Masters themselves. The Rev. Keay himself says, “The language and spirit of the two collections (in the Granth Sahib and in the Bijaks) are the same, and there seems no reason to doubt that they both contain a large majority of poems which are the genuine works of Kabir.”

The collection in Kabir's Bijaks is undoubtedly authentic. Most writers are agreed on the point.

To return to the literary style, the directness and vigour with which Kabir expounds unorthodox views may be illustrated with a few examples. Emphasising that even gods such as Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are not free from the grip of Maya (Illusion) and passions, Kabir writes:

The woman (Maya) hath conquered the three worlds;
She hath made the eighteen Puranas
And the places of pilgrimage love her;
She hath pierced the heart of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva,
And infatuated great kings and sovereigns.

Condemning wealth and pride in physical beauty, Kabir writes:

The limbs that are anointed
With ground aloe-wood, sandal and fragrant soap,
Shall be burnt with wood.
What is there to be proud of in this body and in wealth?

In a single sweep Kabir smashes the whole lot of devotional devices of Hinduism and condemns the Vedas and the Quran as “cloaks of falsehood”. No modernist has dared to classify the Vedas and the Quran thus:

Ceremonial devotion, sacrifice and rosary,
Piety, pilgrimage, fasting and alms,
The nine bhaktis (devotions), the Vedas, the Book (the Quran)—
All these are cloaks of falsehood.
If union with God be obtained by going about naked,
All the beasts of the forests should be saved.
If perfection be obtained by shaving the head,
Why should not sheep obtain salvation?
Kabir says: Hear, O my brethren,
Who hath obtained salvation without the Name of God?

Kabir declares that even Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are not free from transmigration:

Who of men did not die? O pandit, speak and make this plain to me;
Dead is Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesha;
Dead is Ganesh, the son of Parvati;
Dead is Krishna, dead is the Maker (Kal);
Only one did not die—the Lord.
Kabir says, He alone dies not,
Who is not held fast in coming and going

(transmigration).

The Vedas, the Smritis, the Puranas (three Hindu scriptures) are exposed in a single, short verse as works that know nothing of the Supreme Lord:

Indra and Brahma know not Thy attributes;
The four Vedas, the Smritis and the Puranas,
Vishnu and Lakshmi know them not.

Kabir Granth

The Brahmins are denounced in language that they cannot easily forget:

If birth from a Brahmin makes you Brahmin,
Why did you not come another way?
If birth from a Turk makes you a Turk,
Why were you not circumcised in the womb?

It is quite a widespread practice in India to keep repeating “Ram, Ram” as a devotional device for salvation. Kabir reveals its ineffectiveness in a single, short verse by a simple comparison. Can one's mouth be sweetened, he asks, by repeating the word “sugar”? The true mystic “Name” of God or “Ram Nam” is something totally different from the mere repetition of “Ram, Ram”. How that devotion is to be done is indicated in the second verse below:

If by repeating Ram's name, the world is saved,
Then by repeating the word ‘sugar’, the mouth is sweetened.

The path of salvation lies through the body, to be pursued by devotion to the Divine Word:

Make thy body the churn, thy heart the churning staff;
Into the churn put the Word instead of milk.

… Kabir always makes a direct approach to the subject and discards abstractions and speculation as utter nonsense. He was not, as imagined by some, a Vedantist, nor a Vaishnavite, nor a pantheist, nor yet a transcendentalist. He was not influenced by Persian or Arabian mystics. He stood independent of them all, and he certainly never sought to reconcile “the intense and personal mysticism of Islam with the traditional theology of Brahminism”. There is not a word in his Bijaks to support the theory that he sought to bring Hindusim and Islam together in any ordinary, social or political sense of the word.

Nor are his Bijaks an attempt to bring about a compromise between “the simplicity of Islamic practice and the complications of Brahminical ceremonialism”. He was not concerned with either.

It is also fantastic to imagine that he was influenced by Christian thought or teachings. Saints may quote any other Saints and scriptures and use them for driving their message home to their followers, but they do not have to learn their message from books. They teach what they have seen with their own spiritual eyes.

The teachings of all Saints are the same in all essentials. They are not derived from scriptures, but from direct knowledge of the higher path and the ways and means to traverse it. They can write their own scriptures.

Kabir was not “essentially a poet and a musician.” Speaking in poetical form was an incidental part of his work, and it is doubtful if he ever sang his songs.

However great and original his poems—and about their grandeur and beauty there can be no dispute—and however soul-stirring the tunes to which subsequent musicians have set his songs, we must never forget that his poems were only a means. Their end always was to call upon the reader to search for a Perfect Master and thus go back home to his Heavenly Father.

Finally, it must be mentioned that the Bhakti or Devotional School of spiritual practice, of which Kabir was such an outstanding champion, was not the product of the Islamic impact on Hinduism. Perfect Masters explain over and over again that the Bhakti Marg (Devotional Path) for God-realisation came into being along with the creation of the world, and always and ever there is at least one Perfect Master on this earth to show seekers the Homeward Path. Kabir's poems are great because they are the product of a Param Sant Satguru pointing to the Homeward Path. Their literary style, however fascinating, is of secondary importance.