Mir Sufi of minstrels of Bikaner struggle to keep their music alive
By Madhusree Chatterjee
Bikaner, Jan. 3:
Eighty km north of Bikaner, the highway from Jaipur forks into two. A narrow sandy track leads to the heart of the desert, which ends abruptly in a cluster of whitewashed dwellings at Pugal on the border with Pakistan. The hamlet is home to the Mir-e-Alam, an itinerant clan of Sufi
musicians from Sindh province of Pakistan, who have made the desert state their home nearly 800 years ago.
The Mirs, once sought after by the Rajput nobility and the Muslim nomadic herdsmen to sing for them, are taking their sufi “kalaams” of mystics like Khwaja Ghulam Farid, Bulle Shah and Baba Farid to the mainstream after years of insulation, decay and livelihood swaps brought about by unchecked development.
The community, however, has been struggling to keep its 800-year-old legacy alive for the last three decades. Since 1978, when the Rajasthan government commissioned the Indira Gandhi canal project in the Bikaner and its adjoining districts, the new water policy radically changed the nature of the terrain and economics of its people. The canal,
according to author and culture activist Anshu Dogra of Manana, a non-profit group which is helping the Mirs revive their music, unleashed new clock times, work discipline and a cash economy dictated by the market.
The musicians are still in a bind on their home turf. The Hindu population, who have moved in to the region, do not understand the language of the Mirs- a cocktail of Seraiki, Sindhi and Punjabi - and the Muslims are under pressure from the Ulemas to stay away from Sufi music as “it is not within the ambit of Islam”. According to Mukhtiyar Khan, hailed as one of the best Mir voices in India, the canal forced the musicians to work on the fields as they were not making adequate money through music. Fifteen-year-old Farooq for instance went to work in a factory after his family refused to support his musical career. He was forced to drop out after Class VII because of poverty.