Bhagat Kanwar Ram’s music which was Sufi and Hindu and Sikh at the same time (unable to label it) was neither melancholic nor peppy…it was just a call to the divine.

Anwar, Stick to the facts (or the normal interpretation of them) please… I dont think you would like it if I jump to unrelated conclusions about Mohamed and Koran !!

I am sorry I am late, but did I just miss you all accepting the following as true?

1) Pandu was impotent

2) Karna was a good guy, who had to side with evil

3) Pandavas suffered from “moral cowardice”

4) Indian muslims are basically good and we Hindus drove them away towards the evil.

Please tell me you did NOT concede to these terms.

Now,”As far as I discern, ghazals are mostly centered around various facets sensual love: unattainable illicit love, longing for the beloved, the sensual and mental state of lovelornness, and the pain of unrequited love. Almost every such ghazal is sung in a uniform, melancholic monotone devoid of any feeling except sadness”

Bravo!

No thats not true. The author is explaining why he does’nt like gazals–many of us can’t stomach them either…but I can understand many would like them…you cant blame people for liking someting they are bought up to like can you? Just like the other day at an Indian party I could not understand why intelligent girls were dancing to the cheesiest Bollywood songs. I recently rented a movie by Satyajit Ray–was so good? What happened to the movie industry these days? It has gone the way of pure commercialism– Bollywood is at least a hundred times more vulgar than Hollywood…
But you know who do does this kind of thing affect the most? Educated people can laugh at Bollywood, but is there not an obligation to produce tasteful movies for poor people, for whom movies are often a big treat? People with edcuation can be discriminating, but is there not an obligation on the part of artists to give back something to the poor man whose few enjoyments consists of movies? Is there not an obligation for educated people to elevate tastes in general when it comes to movies?

I for one could never understand why Hindus think the Islamic court had a rich culture? It is easy to see how India never produced anything great those years–what happened to the original creativity of the Hindus? They retrogressed under Islamic rule–Where was the culture apart from some poetry and architecture? I am like Sandeep in that I never feel elevated by gazals–this is a personal taste, perhaps I associate them with indolence and a repressed kind of culture. Regarding Sufis–many were tricky in Kashmir–they tried to appear like another HIndu sect and many common people were tricked like this to accepting it without understanding that Islam is a religion that does not tolerate other religions in its midst–i.e. thinks only it has access to the truth…

That was a very refreshing look from an outsider on Mahabharata, and i suspect you are one as it is difficult for any Hindu to come up with that hypothesis. I have been following a large number of blogs for a long time and the arguments made by people with islamic pen names have been largely rhetorical and predictable. Your defense of ghazals was like a breath of fresh air and i wish and hope that more of your ilk start participating in discussion forums.

A couple of points though. Granted that the wikipedia entry did not do full justice to ghazals. Granted also is the fact that the creators of ghazals were the rebels of the day (like the rock starts of today). There were romantics and perhaps mystics. But given the fact that they floursihed under the islamic rule and also that Islamic society is based on the concept of absolute morality, they are unidimensional (either romantic, or rebellious or suphiyana).

In comparison, hinduism is multi-layered and does not practise moral absolutism and the hindu art and culture is also multi-layered. From one perspective something may look highly sensual, but if you look from a elevated perspective, you would find a lot of spiritual meaning hidden in it. Most of the literary works would look like odes to kings, but may in fact, be verses praising God.

The problem that I have about ghazals and shayari is that for most indians north of the vindhyas, urdu, ghazals and shayari are the defining words for poetry and richness of expression.

Regarding Mahabharata and the aftermath, I would like to digress a little bit. Hindu system of morality is based on the concept of Yugas. A yuga is a period of time where the average ratio of good and bad people is relatively constant. Krita Yuga represents the period where there every one was righteous. Treta Yuga, the next one represents the era with 75 % good and 25 % selfish and so on. A yuga purusha appears at the transition from one yuga to another (Yuga sandhi) and lays the moral foundation for the coming Yuga.

Rama comes at the end of Treta Yuga where still good is predominant and you can follow rigid moral rules and win. Krishna comes at the end of Dwapara Yuga where the scales are tilting in the favor of selfish people. The message is that the odds are overwhelming and if you want to survive and win, bend the rules as long as you are clear about the fact that the end is righteous.

Since Hinduism is so complicated, the king or the decision maker had to have a good guru guiding him in his moral decision making. If you look at history, whenever the guru was there to guide the decision maker (Samartha Ramadas for Shivaji etc.), things are good. Unfortunately, most of the times in the last 2 millenia, there is no good guru around, and the confused ruler chooses the improper moral ruleset and looses out (how can u explain defeating some one 10 times and being chivalrous and letting them go). This continues even today in the way we deal with our friends and most importantly foes. This is my rebuttal of your impotent theory.

The blog followers can checkout this interesting site:
http://arvindsharma.wordpress.com/page/3/

-TP