Remembering Rasool Mir Shahabadi: The Bard Beyond Time and the Struggle to Preserve Kashmir’s Legacy on the “World Poetry Day"
Remembering Rasool Mir Shahabadi: The Bard Beyond Time and the Struggle to Preserve Kashmir’s Legacy on the "World Poetry Day"
Peerzada Mohsin Shafi
M.Tech IDM, Member IAENG, Researcher Contracts & Planning
On World Poetry Day, as UNESCO’s call to honour poets and preserve
linguistic heritage echoes globally, my mind drifts to the immortal poet of my
area—Rasool Mir Shahabadi, a poet whose name is whispered with reverence
alongside Keats and Rumi. Born around 1840 in the humble lanes of Mir Mohalla
of Mirmaidan, Dooru Shahabad,Anantnag Rasool Mir’s life—though tragically
brief, ending around 1870—burned with a creative fire that forever altered
Kashmiri literature. Misattributed by many that he lived near Khanqahi Faiz
Panah shrine, the truth is different, his true roots lie in the Mir clan of
Mirmaidan, Doru, a fact etched into the weathered wooden homes and cobbled
paths of his ancestral neighbourhood, where his clan still reside today.
My earliest memories of Rasool Mir are painted in the vibrant hues of
childhood wonder. Each year, our school celebrated Rasool Mir Day with a zeal
& zest that transformed classrooms into stages. Debates crackled with
energy, quizzes tested our knowledge of his couplets, and rehearsals of his
poems filled the air. I was in the class 2nd when I first stumbled upon his verse “Rinde
Poosh Maal Gindenay Draee Lolo”. The rhythmic cadence of the words,
sung by a group of girl students, captivated me. “Who wrote this?” I asked my
teacher, expecting a living name. “Rasool Mir!” she replied, as though invoking
a saint. After returning from the school that evening, I sprinted home to my
father, who, with a playful wink without telling the truth, declared, “Rasool
Mir is our neighbour!” He even recited one of his famous couplet.
Yi Chu Rasool Mir Shahabad Dooray
Tami Chu Trovmut Ashiqeh Dukaan
Yeveh Aashqow Cheveh Tor-Re Tor-Ray
Meh Chu Mooray Lalvun Naar
Here stands Rasool Mir at Shahabad Dooru
Where a tavern of love he’s opened anew
Come, O lovers! Drink chalice after chalice
For fiery flames of love consume me through.
The next morning, during rehearsals, an elderly man arrived, Ghulam
Jeelani Mir Sahab, a descendant of the poet and former village head. He
corrected a misrecited line and I, wide-eyed, believed I’d witnessed Rasool Mir
himself as last night my father had told me that Mir is our neighbour. Racing
home, I breathlessly announced, “Rasool Mir visited our school!” My mother,
with tender amusement, shattered the illusion: “He died 127 years before you
were born.” The revelation struck like a summer storm. When my mother gently
explained that Rasool Mir had passed away long before I was born, my young
heart shattered. Tears streamed down my cheeks—a blend of betrayal and grief—as
I grappled with the idea that the poet I believed was my neighbour existed only
in whispers of the past. Sensing my anguish, my father, with his quiet wisdom,
took my hand and led me on a tour to Mir Mohalla, a mere 50 meters from
our home.
There, time folded into itself. Before me stood a weathered building of
creaking wooden planks which belong to the clan of Rasool Mir, its facade
etched with decades of sun and rain. The ground floor buzzed with the hum of
shops—tailors stitching, bakers kneading, vendors calling and barbers trimming—while
one wing housed the Government Middle School Mirmaidan famously known as
“Muqdam School”. My father guided me deeper into the labyrinth of the
Mohalla, through narrow lanes where sunlight filtered like gold dust. “This,”
he murmured, “is where Rasool Mir walked, wrote, and dreamed.”
The air felt heavy with ghosts of poetry. I traced my fingers over the
grooves of ancient wood, imagining the poet’s hand on the same beams. In that
moment, the boundary between past and present blurred. Though just seven years
old, I felt the weight of legacy settle on my small shoulders. By the time we
returned home, my tears had dried into awe.
The next morning, I marched to school, chest puffed with pride. To my
wide-eyed classmates, I became a storyteller—a keeper of secrets. “I’ve seen
his house!” I declared, recounting the wooden planks, the school’s chalk-dusted
windows, the very air that once held his breath. For a fleeting moment, Rasool
Mir lived again—not in verses or textbooks, but in the wide-eyed wonder of
children.
Years melted into decades, but Rasool Mir’s presence never faded. As I
grew older, his name blossomed from a local tale into a cultural monument. He
is celebrated as the “Keats of Kashmir”—a title that mirrors his
lyrical intensity—and revered as “Imam-e-Ishqiya Shayri” (the
sage of romantic verse), a beacon for generations of Kashmiri poets who’ve
dipped their pens in the ink of his influence. His verses, once confined to recitals,
now echo in academic corridors, Sufi gatherings, and the quiet hum of lovers’
whispers.
Driven by pride and curiosity, I plunged into the labyrinth of his life.
Maturity had sharpened my questions. Who was Rasool Mir beyond the myths? Did
his bloodline still pulse through our neighbourhood? I interviewed elders with
memories as fragile as autumn leaves, and traced oral histories that twisted
like village alleys. Yet, the poet’s descendants remained phantoms. A neighbour
claimed Mir’s two sons had migrated to Banihal long ago, vanishing
into the mist of time. No records, no graves just rumours, fragile as cobwebs. The
irony stung, the man who immortalized love in Kashmir’s soul left no tangible
thread to his own lineage. His legacy, like the Jhelum River, flows unseen in
some places, surges boldly in others but never truly dries.
Rasool Mir carved his name into the annals of Kashmiri poetry not merely
through verses, but by forging a linguistic alchemy uniquely his own. His
genius lay in the meticulous selection and fusion of words—Persian elegance
woven into Kashmiri earthiness, mystic abstraction tethered to visceral
emotion. To read him is to navigate a labyrinth: his poems, dense with layered
metaphors and philosophical depth, challenge even seasoned scholars. Yet this
very complexity rendered his work inimitable. While many poets borrowed from
tradition, Rasool Mir became tradition—a standard against which Kashmiri
lyricism is measured.
Celebrated as the “Keats of Kashmir”, the title transcends mere
comparison. Like Keats, Mir possessed an almost supernatural insight into human
frailty and desire. His exploration of romance was not monochromatic; it
spanned the spectrum from earthly passion to divine yearning. He is the first Kashmiri
poet who introduced Kashmiri Gazals. In his ghazals, love is a paradox—a
destructive flame and a redemptive force, a personal ache and a universal
truth. This multidimensionality, coupled with his psychological acuity,
cemented his place as “Imam-e-Ishqiya Shayri”—the master/pioneer of romantic
verse.
A defining chapter of his legend unfolded in his youth, during a fateful
encounter with Mehmood Gami, the towering poet-sage of the era. Drawn by Gami’s
renown, young Rasool Mir ventured into a mehfil (poetic gathering), where the
air thrummed with reverence. Gami, seated like a mystic monarch amidst
disciples, was immersed in meditation as singers performed. Mir, the unassuming
newcomer, sat transfixed, his soul swaying to the rhythm of the ghazals.
When the song ended, Gami’s gaze fell on the unfamiliar face glowing
with silent intensity. Summoning the boy, he asked, “Who are you?” Rasool Mir,
trembling yet resolute, introduced himself. Gami, intrigued, invited him to
recite. Hesitation gripped Mir—here was a colossus of poetry, and he, a
sapling. But courage prevailed. He recited his verses, each word a brushstroke
painting worlds.
The room stilled. Gami, renowned for his stoicism, sat wide-eyed. The
verses—crafted with a maturity belying Mir’s youth—were flawless. Thematic
depth, structural precision, emotional resonance—all hallmarks of a master.
Gami, uncharacteristically speechless, finally murmured to his disciples: “Amis
Cheh Jaaneh Margi Hind Kairan” (This boy will not live long). The
prophecy, chilling yet poetic, stemmed from a belief that such perfection,
achieved in boyhood, defied nature’s balance. A soul so luminous, he implied,
was destined to burn briefly. This encounter, etched into oral histories,
reveals Rasool Mir’s duality: a prodigy who mastered life’s profundities in a
handful of years, yet remained tethered to mortality. His early death, as Gami
foresaw, transformed him from a poet into a myth—a comet whose fleeting blaze
still illuminates Kashmir’s literary sky.
While Rasool Mir’s romantic poetry earned him the title “Imam-e-Ishqiya
Shayri”, his true genius lies in the mystic undercurrents that ripple
through his verses—a dimension often overshadowed yet radiant with spiritual
profundity. Beyond the sighs of earthly lovers, Mir’s pen danced with divine
longing, crafting poems that transcend time and dogma. His Sufi ethos, steeped
in the quest for union with the Infinite, pulses through lines where love is
not merely human passion but a sacred dialogue with the cosmos.
Sufis and scholars alike regard his mystic verses as masterpieces of
Kashmiri literature, believing Mir attained a spiritual zenith few poets ever
reach. His work is not just art; it is a revelation—a mirror
reflecting the soul’s journey from mortal confines to eternal truth. Two
couplets, inscribed on his tombstone, encapsulate this transcendent vision:
Kad Choon Alif, Laam Zulf, Meem Dahaan
Tchuie,
Pur Aqaleh Sabak Shakleh Alim Laam Nigaroo.
(Like Alif is thy stature, locks like Laam,
lips like Meem,
O beloved! Thy form, a divine script, my soul has seen.)
Here, Mir merges the Arabic alphabet with celestial metaphor. Alif ,
the first letter, symbolizes the upright, God-conscious human; Laam
mirrors cascading locks, embodying worldly beauty; Meem
evokes the curve of a lover’s lips. Together, they spell Alif laam —“the
Knower” or Divine—a sublime play on script and spirit.
Rasul Tchu Zaenith Deen-o-Mazhab Rukh Ti Zulf
Cheen
Kaw Zaani Kya Gow Kufur Tie Islam Nigaroo.
(With Thy visage and tresses, my faith is
bound,
What is disbelief, what is Islam? I cannot fathom.)
In these lines, Mir dismantles the binaries of religion. The beloved’s
beauty—both face (rukh) and curls (zulf)—obliterates the
boundaries between kufr (disbelief) and Islam (faith).
For Mir, divine love exists beyond labels; it is a force that renders dogma
meaningless. To the Sufi, this is fanaa—the annihilation of self in
the Beloved—where rituals dissolve into rapture.
These verses are not mere poetry; they are portals. Mir’s mysticism
challenges readers to see the sacred in the sensuous, the eternal in the
ephemeral. His words echo the Sufi credo: “Wherever you turn, there is
the Face of God.” Yet, as he warns, “every eye may not be
perceptible”—only those attuned to the unseen can grasp the layers beneath
his metaphors.
It is a bitter irony that Rasool Mir, Kashmir’s poetic titan,
remains a stranger in his own land. The bulk of literature celebrating his
genius has been penned by outsiders—scholars from distant cities, historians in
ivory towers—while his hometown, Dooru Shahabad, has watched in silence.
Despite being home to educators and intellectuals, the village has failed to honour
its prodigal son beyond token gestures. A tombstone stands as a mute relic, and
annual cultural programs—flashy yet hollow—reduce his legacy to performative
rituals. Children today, though bright-eyed and curious, know Rasool Mir as a
name in textbooks, not as the heartbeat of their heritage.
UNESCO’s World Poetry Day (March 21), established in 1999 to revive
poetic traditions and safeguard linguistic diversity, offers a mirror to our
neglect. While the world unites to celebrate verse, Shahabad’s apathy reflects
a broader malaise: we have outsourced our cultural memory. The poet who
immortalized our valleys, rivers, and longing now belongs more to academia than
to the soil that nurtured him. This is not just about Rasool Mir—it is about
every local legend fading into oblivion. Festivals and tomb renovations are
meaningless if children cannot recite a couplet, if parents cannot recount how
his words once healed broken hearts, or if teachers reduce his mysticism to
exam footnotes. Heritage is not preserved in marble; it lives in the stories we
tell, the songs we sing, and the pride we instill.
On this World Poetry Day, let us pledge to rewrite this narrative.
Parents: Replace bedtime screens with bedtime couplets. Teachers: Turn
classrooms into mehfils where students dissect wisdom word of
our ancestors. Institutions: Digitize oral histories, translate verses of local
celebrated personalities into global tongues, and collaborate with artists to
reimagine his work. The stakes are existential. In an age of algorithm-driven
amnesia, we risk losing not just our legends, but a piece of our soul. To
forget our ancestors is to surrender our identity; to celebrate him is to armor
our future.
UNESCO’s vision was clear: poetry is not a relic—it is resistance. Let people
of Kashmir rise again and this time particularly people of Shahabad should rise
from its slumber. Let Rasool Mir’s ghazals echo in kitchens, fields, and
WhatsApp statuses. Let his tombstone be more than a photo op—let it be a
pilgrimage for poets, a classroom under the sky. For in the end, heritage is
not inherited—it is chosen. And on this day, we choose to say: No more.
No more outsourcing our pride. No more reducing legends to hashtags. From
Shahabad to Srinagar, let Rasool Mir’s words become the anthem of a generation
that refuses to let its roots wither.
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