Bengali Muslims in love with Shakti

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The land of Bengal, where the population is descended from Dravidian

ancestral stock (although they now speak an Indo-Aryan language), is

a meeting place of Islam, Shaktism, and Tantrism. Muslim Bengali

literature thus venerated the sacred women of Islam as manifestations

of Shakti. Prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatimah assumed the popular

robe of the mother in Bengal, where the cult of the Mother Goddess

Shakti dominated religious life. Hayat Mahmud, at the beginning of

his Jang Nama, asked to take the feet of Fatimah on his head. Saiyid

Murtaza addressed Fatimah as "the mother of the world". Pagla Kanai,

a Bengali Muslim poet in the nineteenth century, identified Fatimah

as "Mother Tara" or "Mother Tarini" and prayed to her in this passage

that blends Islam and Shaktism:

 

O mother, Pagla Kanai, who is of no consequence

cries for you with every breath;

please cast a little shadow of your feet on me;

O Mother, take me to your feet.

O Mother Tara, the redeemer of the world,

O Mother Tarini, you shall appear as the savior of Muslims

when Israfil will blow his horn,

when everything will be reduced to water,

and when your father's community will sink into water without a boat.

 

Tara is a Tantric Shakti goddess (mahavidya), one of the best-loved

manifestations of Shakti for Tantric practitioners, and as such she

has appealed to the hearts of Bengali Muslims as much as the

Prophet's beloved daughter Fatimah.

 

Pagla Kanai also compared Fatimah to the goddess Kali and considered

her more virtuous:

 

Mother Kali is virtuous indeed—

she stood on her husband's chest!

Did my gracious mother (Fatimah) ever trample `Ali?

 

(Quoted in The Islamic Syncretic Tradition in Bengal by Asim Roy, p.

94-95.)

 

Centuries ago, a Bengali Muslim named Saiyad Jafar was one among

several Muslims who composed odes to Kali. Here is an example:

 

Why do you in such a plight call yourself merciful?

(This is the Mother, the merciful, and in such a plight!)

What wealth can you give me? You yourself have not even clothes.

Would a woman choose nakedness if she had anything with which to

clothe herself?

Your husband is a beggar from his birth, your father is most cruel,

There is not in the family of either

any to be a benefactor.

For Saiyad Jafar what wealth is there in your keeping?

Hara's [shiva's] breast possesses your twin Feet.

 

(quoted in Kali, the Feminine Force by Ajit Mookerjee, p. 104)

 

A modern Bengali poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), followed the

example of earlier poets like Saiyad Jafar in this ode to Kali, using

a play on words since in Bengali kali means 'ink':

 

Oh mother of mine,

There's ink on my hands,

ink on my face.

The neighbors laugh.

My education amounts to nothing —

I see "ShyaMa" in the letter M

And Kali in the letter K,

I dance and clap my hands.

Only my tears multiply

when my eyes light

on the rows of black marks

in multiplication tables.

I couldn't care less for

the alphabet's shades of sound

since your dark, lovely shade

isn't among them.

But Mother, I can read

all that you write

on leaves in the forest,

on the waters of the sea,

and in the ledger of the sky.

Let them call me illiterate.

 

Many regard him as the greatest poetic force in Bengali literature

after the world-famous Rabindranath Tagore. Both Nazrul Islam's poems

and prose writing are exuberant with a certain force and energy,

denouncing all social and religious bigotry and oppression. The

indigenous Shakta Tantrism of Bengal supports these progressive

ideals.