To understand the Baul is to understand the state of nothingness associated with his rejection, by which it is not to be construed, as a willing suspension of disbelief, nor a reckless abandonment of responsibility or that of becoming inordinately fatalistic, but to go back to the beginning:

to infancy, one we simply cannot recollect without some prodding assistance: to our ‘roots’, if we have one? Clearly life is a blessed moment of procreation and an extension of the continuous cycle of Mother Nature which rolls on over and we only know too well, that it is a process we simply cannot roll back.


1. Fakir Lalon Shah

The year 1991 passed uneventfully with our willful exclusion of an epochal event of literary-cultural-philosophical significance. It was the death centenary of the agnostic sage of Bangladesh Fakir Lalon Shah, whose date of birth, while a mystery, it is said that at the time of his departure from planet earth he was well over 100 years of age. In as much as proofs of physical dates, place of birth and his ‘religion’ are concerned, Lalon Shah remains necessarily enigmatic and many mysteries surrounded him them, as much as they do now.

A lack of detailed accounts or published documentation about him or of the times he lived in, in his entirely private, controversial and secretive quest for a union with the Maker of the Universe that soon went public with its acceptability, it is not surprising that every aspect of his life has been up for scrutiny, curiosity and the resultant myths, half-truths and unfortunate fabrications on the philosophy he wished to expound, is what we are faced with today.

In Bangladesh where Lalon Shah’s body was interned without any religious ceremony in Seuria, Kushtia, his legacy has been one of endless vituperations of diabolical ignorance straddled in a struggle for an Islamic identity by its Bedounist mainstream fanatics in direct confrontation with the dominant city bred middle-class precepts of the ill defined Brahminist supremacist ‘secular’ Bengalee culture, matters have remained deliberately complicated in the understanding of the great man.

The ingrained and intentioned communal hatred espoused by extremists of both end of the divide, stirred by no end of senseless debates as to who’s God is the better, made a small yet significant part of the thinking population to move away from the dichotomy of it all, and examine, identify and try to grasp the aspirations of our ancient Baul heritage. There were valid reasons for these individual quests. The philosophy, poems or reading into the life of this world class sage is absent in any Bangladesh educational curriculum, while more banal and under-average personalities have been ‘respectably’ accommodated.

However, even before we start this discussing on the Baul’s, a word of caution: contrary to popular misconception, synonymity with Lalon Shah, and inference of him being a Baul ‘guru’ borders on middle class fascination for tokenistically tagging philosophical quests of the marginal, to a particular human avatar of a period in time.

The fact is Baul’s existed hundreds of years before Lalon Shah not only in Bengal, indeed similar philosophies, lifestyle and expressions can be identified in other parts of the world. It is a rarely ‘advertised’ global concept of the alternative, and it is only appropriate that the term Bauliana has been used in the context of this series of essays.

2. The Message from the Messenger

Music was the vehicle of Lalon Shah’s message, and no matter how esoteric the contents were, it never failed to find a ready audience as the natives of Bengal always had a natural inclination and talent for the art form. Baul’s were never a community, nor were they a mutual admiration society, and to even suggest that they are one, makes us question: Why then do the reject any ‘home’ greater than the body that houses our unanchored and restless souls?

Fakir Lalon Shah was exceptional in that he personified what the Baul’s ascribed as a belief system and saw huge numbers of them flocking in admiration of the great man. Lalon Shah gave a voice to the Baul’s struggle in the poems set to music, something that was sadly lacking at the crossroad of our socio-political-spiritual struggle that started ions ago.

Rejection of the inevitable self as an ‘inquiry of the self’ was never so obvious, for within the prevailing dogma it elevated anybody with a sense of mission and purpose, to a pedestal for worship. On the contrary Lalon Shah worshipped man in that he never believed in the prevalent hub and spoke notion of Man on Earth and his ‘almost humanoid’ resembling Maker, trillions of kilometers up away in some celestial paradise – where HE apparently resides!

Removed from society, and mostly in grief and tragedies Lalon Shah evolved: his depth came not from wallowing on the periphery of mainstream beliefs, his protracted period of isolation were harbingers for his immense understanding into the intricacies of life, and passing the Message on in the simplest of couplets for the average person to understand was his mission.

Life’s complex equations explained in the simplest of term were his forte. It is therefore not unusual that the word ‘Fakir’ precedes his name, a title and a derivative from the Arabic word Fiqh meaning someone who has acquired deep philosophical knowledge through practice, patience, inquiry and sacrifice.

Having said that, there was no less attempts to make a Hindu or Muslim out of him as he lived and the century since he died - but to no avail, for the sage during his lifetime, steadfastly repudiated any attempts to be branded a ‘follower’ of an organized religion. Till this day for his followers unwilling to infer religiosity on Lalon Shah, he is simply ‘Shai-ji’ and Baul again is no religion but a quest.

Lalon Shah did not believe in looking UP for inspiration, but looking within. Importantly he did not imply that looking within, meant worship or the deification of one man – but MAN the creation of the Maker.

3. The Bauls of Bengal

To understand the Baul is to understand the state of nothingness associated with his rejection, by which it is not to be construed, as a willing suspension of disbelief, nor a reckless abandonment of responsibility or that of becoming inordinately fatalistic, but to go back to the beginning: to infancy, one we simply cannot recollect without some prodding assistance: to our ‘roots’, if we have one? Clearly life is a blessed moment of procreation and an extension of the continuous cycle of Mother Nature which rolls on over and we only know too well, that it is a process we simply cannot roll back.

The Baul philosophy of agonistic monotheism is therefore universal in its application and not something that evolved in whimsical isolation, and while we explore, understand and appreciate the lifestyle of great minds who have too often moved away from established and grounded norms of life and living, to one of selflessly rejecting the status quo with great peril to themselves like Lalon Shah, we are consciously reminded of someone who gave up on the richest of riches, an adoring society, palatial homes and a loving family, who turned recluse, a hermit, not because he was ostracized – but by choice.

He was Gautama Buddha and his quest was for Nirvana.

Birth is never conditional nor a deviation but an extension of Mother Nature’s continuation. Like every child that is born, the nucleus entity ‘family’, bears charge of responsibility, for its growth, nurturing and imminent strides into life, and ultimate acceptance in a society which is afterall the creation of man. But that is only part of the man made equation and one we have no option but to live with, there are yet many consequent travails in this journey called life, that cannot easily be understood nor can it be explained with the most hazardous aspect of it all is its unpredictability.

Exactly when, how, and why at all – we go against the natural process and adopt ways of life that we ironically and inherently consider natural is mind boggling. Consider for example the breathing of an infant.

Nature has designed every human to be diaphragmatic breathers: observe any newborn sleeping face up, steady rise and fall of the stomach – and not the chest, punctuates its breathing. Yet in less than the time it takes for it to sit up and warble a few sentences, the entire breathing process is taken over by extreme pressure to the lungs? Yoga taught us proper breathing thousands of years ago, but it is only recently that the medical profession has seen its merit in treating cardiac and asthmatic patients.

3. The Myth behind ‘Affected by the WIND’

This deliberation on breathing is essential in our understanding of the word Baul, for ‘affected by the wind’ it may mean from the Sanskrit (some say Persian) variant Batul, the underlying tragedy is the term has rudely and deliberately been concocted as ‘going mad’. The lampoonisation as if it is the philosophy of a bunch of insane lunatics with some insinuations even going as far as implying this, as the aftereffect of all the ‘wind’ consumed in chillums full of ganja or marijuana and the word Batil or wasted is only a continuation of Batul.

In a separate chapter we will dwell on hallucinogens and its impact on spirituality.

The attempts to render Baul’s to a farce has been unending – specially since the status quo is one that has no temerity to understand, comprehend or even delve into the minds and works of our folk philosophers who we have deliberately rendered a 'subordinate culture' to overcome and satiate our inadequacies – our lack of basic knowledge, our ingratiating and perverse sin in claiming to be Masters of our own destiny.

What then is the ‘wind’ that the Baul’s believe in?

One answer could well be “stop breathing and find out!”

In the divisive trinity of earth, wind and fire that underlines monotheism today, it is entirely a unique attribute of the Baul when he interprets Adam, the first ‘Man’ for us. Apparently the Maker chose to breathe wind to cool down the fireball he ejected from the Sun and send hurtling down to the planet we have now inherited. Science confirms that rainfall and precipitations continued for millions of years resulting in the formation of what we call the planet Earth. Yet the advent of first Man whom many will not reject in that it amounts to rejection of ones existence is often flawed, temporal and at the least unconvincing: we have no clue if the ‘being’ was a humanoid?

Sufis connote Adam as merger of two Persian words – Aag (as in fire) and Dum (as in breathing). ‘Thinking life’ on the planet by some calculation of the Maker had to be of the ‘breathing’ variety, to be of some consequence, to appreciate existing and existence and this places Man in a category far removed from other ‘creatures’ if we may.

The Baul therefore believes the Maker breathed life into all of us, and we are only but a continuation of that very first breath, the very first wind – and scientifically ‘first life’ was possibly an air-borne virus, that got trapped in the fiery dust debris, fell into, cooled off and evolved underwater and went on to produce bacteria’s, cells, till it moved over land, and what have we. We have no proof other than our instincts to confirm any of these speculations.

Life for the Baul is an extension of the ‘first wind’ and what we call SOUL that charges our dynamo and keeps the infinitely complex vehicle called the BODY going is synchronized not to hours, minutes or seconds that we calculate, but the numbers of time we breathe in and breathe out. Ironically how many times we may breath in and out in a lifetime is beyond scientific reasoning are ‘serious’ matters the Baul wishes to reason with. Therefore every Man no matter his religion, faith or ‘religion’, receives a Baul farewell when obituaries read “he breathed his last” or poignantly “he passed away”.

Science’s quest is unending for its is a study of nature and what we say today in agreement may well be doomed redundant in the days ahead simply because nature deemed it fit. One ought to stop and wonder if looking for LIFE in Mars is conditional on finding water, or the right WIND?

LIFE is wind and let us not blame the Baul for pointing this out. If they have been ‘affected by the wind’ it is merely because they have pointedly reminded us to our insane and mad rush to live life in subterfuge - in hypocrisy.

If the Baul truth overwhelms any of us – let us pause and take a deep breath!

Maqsoodul Haque (Mac) is a radical columnist and jazz musician based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He can be contacted at dhakafusionband@yahoo.com