SHAH ABDUL LATIF
ABDUL LATIF of Bhit, called essentially "Shah" or "Ruler" is a one of a kind figure in writing. He is the best of Sindhi authors, as well as he has been likened with the writing of his territory, as though he were co-terminous with Sindhi writing. The principal outsiders who investigated the human progress and culture of Sind felt that Shah was the main Poet and Philosopher Sind had created, and the general vogue of Shah-Jo-Risalo, or Shah's Poetical Works, in the place where there is the Sindhu, slanted them to trust that the Risalo was the main artistic work in the Sindhi dialect.
It has turned out to be clear now that, a long way from being the main artist of Sind, or the main artist of his time, Shah was just a single - yet the best of a huge number of writers who shaped a 'home of singing flying creatures' in the seventeenth and eighteenth hundreds of years. Shah was the finest bloom in a garden of verse. His verse is not that of a pioneer, it is the verse of satisfaction; it is not the verse of experimentation or development, it is the verse of generous beatitude. Nor is it right to call him the remainder of the conventional or medieval writers in Sindhi, as some have attempted to make out; Shah is no Milton, the remainder of the Elizabethans'. It is outstanding that Shah looked upon Sachal as his otherworldly successor. Furthermore, there were others other than Sachal to keep up the custom of Shah. Shah accomplished for Sindhi dialect and literature¬ and the Sindhi human what other world writers have accomplished for their own dialect and nation in their own specific way¬ Hafiz for the Persian Lyric, Dante for the' famous vernacular' of Italy, and Tulsidas for Hindi dialect and writing.
Another misguided judgment about Shah requires a more point by point introduction, since it is more steady. It is to regard Shah as absolutely a writer of Islam, composing for the Muslims, and in the affirmed Islamic: form. Were Shah truly an Islamic artist, immaculate and straightforward, he would not have made the interest he has made to the Hindu personality and opinion. The Sindhi-Hindus, constrained by Muslim fanaticism to stop Sind, still swing to Shah-Jo ¬Risalo as to a sacred text, and with nostalgic assessment. This would be unimaginable if Shah were a writer of Islam, and not a devoted Sindhi and basically Indian artist, completely in accordance with other Indian artists. That Shah was by birth, childhood and lineage, a Muslim, and that he fit in with the principles of his confidence, can't be repudiated. Shah had any measure of worship for the Prophet, and profound respect and warmth for his child in-law, Ali, and Ali's child martyred in Kerbela. Be that as it may, he was not an inflexible Muslim, bound by a doctrine or custom. Some of his most well known lines are:
It were well to hone Namaz and Fast
Be that as it may, Love's vision needs a different Art.
There is a legend that when they asked Shah whether he was a Sunni Muslim or a Shia, he said he was neither one of the hes, was in ¬between. What's more, when somebody stated: There is nothing in¬ between', he stated, Then I am Nothing.' Muslim journalists have shed very unnecessary ink to talk about what sort of Sufi he was: did he have a place with the Qadiri arrange, or the Chishti arrange? He had something which neither of the Orders had, and no preceptor of both of these Orders could claim to have started him into Sufism. So somebody solicits, would he say he was then from the Uwesi sort of Sufi, a man who has not had a preceptor or Murshid? No defi¬nite answer is conceivable. A man who could wear the clothing of Hindu Jogis, meander with them for quite a long time, make journeys to Hingla, Dwarka and other consecrated spots of the Hindus, a man who broke, without the smallest regret, the Islamic order against Samaa or Dance-music, and passed on tasting the joy of that Dance-music, a man who made a special effort, in that time of Kalhora bias, to haul out from a horde of enthusiast Muslims a poor Hindu whom they were continuing to change over coercively to Islam, could barely be viewed as a Muslim, unadulterated and basic. It is significant that one of the steady and dear companions of Shah was Madan, a Hindu, and the two performers who console his spirit, Atal and Chanchal, were likewise Hindus. On the off chance that, in Sur Kalyan he alluded to Prohpet Mahomed as the Karni or the' Cause' of creation, or somewhere else he envisioned the rain cloud floating crosswise over Islamic terrains and she Iding appreciative showers over the Tomb of the Prophet, or on the off chance that he cited or alluded to the verses of the Koran in more than a hundred places in the Risalo, it just demonstrates his confidence and wonderful intensity and his comprehension of the audi¬ence to whom he was tending to his verse. It doesn't demonstrate proselytizer enthusiasm or unyieldingness. Were everything that he wrote to die and just a single or two Surs like Sur Ramkali to make due, there would be no trouble in exhibiting that Shah had partiality with Hindus and their religion. G. M. Syed, in his mindful book, Paigham-e-Latif or Message of Latif, has drawn a correlation between a writer of Pan-Islamism, or a basically Islamic artist like Iqbal, and an enthusiastic and patriot artist like Shah. At the point when Shah was going to God to shower bounty and success upon Sind, in lines dear to each Sindhi, he was certainly picturing Sind as an essential piece of Hind.
No peruser of Shah can overlook that the whole verse of Shah is thrown in the conventional ragas and raginis of Indian verse, his saints and champions are Indians, every last bit, and that the con¬tent of his verse is Indian, medieval doubtlessly, yet medieval Indian, and not Central Asiatic, .or West Asiatic. The wise perusers of Shah have noticed that in all his story-lyrics the lady is the mate and the male individual the one looked for after-in the mold impossible to miss to Indian writers alone.
One point which the reporters and commentators of Shah and his verse have clean missed is that Shah ought to be viewed not as the voice and translator of the constricted Sind we know, yet the artist of that Greater Sind which stretched out in days of yore to Kashmir and Kanoj, to Makran and Saurashtra, Jaisalmer and Barmer. On some other supposition, the' stories' of Shah would have no appropriate noteworthiness, and his wanderings would be without a point and reason. Plot the extraordinary focuses come to by Shah in his wanderings on a guide of the Indian Sub-Conti¬nent and that would demonstrate the limits of the Greater Sind of which Shah sang in his Surs.
It is conceivable to make excessively of the spiritualist and sufistic ele¬ment in Shah's verse, and to by-pass another prevalent theme or component in his 'verse c-his Sindhiyat or the particular Sindhi-ness of his verse which is to be found in no other Sindhi artist or author. This Sindhiyat is obviously one of the soonest and most fragrant of the few blossoms in the Indian laurel of Poetry and Philosophy. The two fundamental viewpoints in Shah's verse which merit point by point treatment are his otherworldliness and Sindhiuat, Fitly has he been known as the Sage of Mihran (or the Sindhu), where Mihran or the Sindhu is just the longest of the Indian waterways. The two most imperative paints in Shah's verse and his mental make-up are that he was a God-intoxi¬cated Soul and that he was the Voice of Sind. His being a Muslim does not make a difference so in particular.
It is additionally worth nothing that excepting one Muslim, to be specific Mirza Kalich Beg, the creator of a life story of Shah in Sindhi, and a Lexicon on Shah, almost every one of the editors, biographers, pundits and analysts on Shah upto the division of Sind from the Bombay Presidency 11937), nay upto the Partition of India (1947) were non-Muslims Dr. Ernest Trumpp was the first to draw out a version of the Risalo (1866), and Dr. H. T. Sorley was the first to write in English a book on the life and times of Shah and trans¬late a significant agent piece of Ids lyrics (Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit 1940). Sir Bartle Frere's original copy on Shah has 1101 been distributed nor Mir Abdul Husain's composition, implied by a few essayists. Aside from these names, every other name of sincere laborers in Shah's vineyard in the British administration, have been Hindu names. Dayararn Gidurnal, Judge, composed on Shah under the nom de plume of Sigma in his Something about Sind (1882); gathering from valid sources tales about Shah, Lilararn (Sing)Watanmal, another Judge, composed a shod existence of the writer (1890); educationist Tarachand Showkiram, drawn out a release of Shah, under Government aegis in 1900 ; Lalchand An~rdinornal composed iii Sindhi a handout all Shaha no Shah' the main decade of the present century. Jethrnal Parsram composed Stories from Shah and treated of Shah in his Sufis and usiics of Sind in the second decade; Bherumal Mahirchand created his Latifi-Sair in 1928 giving a portray of the Travels of ah, Naraindas Bhambhani wrote in Sindhi a book on The Heroines of Shah, Professors T. L. Vaswani, M. M. Gidwani and the present essayist composed magazine articles and flyers on Shah, or more all, Dr. H. M. Gurbaxani brought out three volumes of Shah-J o-Risalo (from 1923 on¬wards) with his excellent Introduction on Shah (Muqadamah Latifi) which will dependably remain a historic point in Sindhi writing. The two Muslim names of authors on Shah in the British time frame are those of Md Sidik Mernon, essayist in Sindhi of a History of Sindhi writing in the third decade of twentieth century in which he had perforce to locate the best space for Shah, "and Dr. U. M. Daudpota, the most loved understudy of Dr. H. M. Gur¬baxani, and his right hand in the readiness of his stupendous work.