Kabir satsang with a twist

The ghats of Benaras, the city where Kabir was born into a family of poor weavers more than 500 years ago, will reverberate once more with his poetry at the first Mahindra Kabira Festival being held over this weekend in the ‘eternal city’.

A two-day affair, the weekend Festival will be a celebration of the poetry and message of Kabir, and of Benaras’ cultural heritage, with performances by the likes of Prahlad Tipaniya, the well known Kabir folk singer from Malwa; Mir Mukhtiyar Ali who sings Kabir bhajans in the Rajasthani folk style; Benaras Gharana maestros Rajan and Sajan Mishra; and pop band Kabir Cafe that specialises in Kabir’s poetry.

The festival will open with a performance by Shabnam Virmani and Vipul Rikhi of the Kabir Project, an initiative that has, in many ways, been the spark that has kindled the current enthusiasm for Kabir among youngsters, seen most obviously in the slew of Kabir festivals across Indian cities in recent years.

Kabir, in truth, was never forgotten. Marginalised communities, especially, have sung and invoked his poetry all through the centuries. Initiated in 2003, the Kabir Project was Virmani’s endeavour to follow and discover just these communities and the ‘spiritual and socio-political resonances of Kabir’s poetry’ in their lives in the present.

Until now, the Project has yielded four documentary films on various aspects of Kabir’s poetry, explored through interviews with folk singers such as Tipaniya and Pakistani qawal Farid Ayaz, Kabir scholars such as Linda Hess, the Kabir Panthis who claim him as their prophet, and NGOs like Eklavya who have used him in their teaching curriculum.

The Project has also brought out six books and conducted interesting experiments with Kabir’s poetry, such as getting students of Srishti Design School in Bangalore to design wall art and graffiti around it.

“A recent initiative,” says Rikhi, “is Ajab Shahr, an online archive. The YouTube channel has been active for a year, and has around 150 videos of songs and interviews. Eventually, we hope to have 600 videos.” There’s also a site on the anvil with free videos, on which these videos will be embedded and have other details. Notes, annotations, translations, transcriptions, texts, subtitles.

But the most obvious fallout of the Project has been the proliferation of Kabir festivals. Earlier, says Rikhi, there’d been a Kabir Utsav that Prahlad Tipaniya had been conducting in his village Lumiyakhedi for many years. But after the Kabir Project documentaries were made in 2009, recounts Virmani, urban groups in Auroville, Pune, Delhi, Baroda, Hyderabad, etc began to hold screenings where singers would be invited and workshops held. In 2010, the first Rajasthan Kabir Yatra was held, and in 2011, the Mumbai Kabir Fest, which has become a lively annual affair even though it’s organised and run entirely in the spirit of volunteership. “Ironically, the first Mumbai Kabir Festival was sponsored by Mahindra,” says Virmani.

For Rikhi, however, more important than the festivals is how the ‘spirit of Kabir has entered the urban space through satsang’. Most people, he says, tend to think of satsangs as old people getting together to sing bhajans. “But the Kabir satsang is a different kind of space. It’s an interrogative space, a space for exploration, a critical space, and also an immersive space, full of joy,” he says. Adds Virmani, “The Kabir Fest in Mumbai, for instance, isn’t just the annual festival; there’s a series of events held through the year in people’s drawing rooms, in attics. It’s a revival of the satsang idea, but with a twist.”