e n

Kabir’s exile and death

Did Kabir go to Maghar of his own accord? The answer to this question is complicated. But from the available historical references, it is clear that he left Kashi and moved to Maghar out of compulsion. He was exiled by the ruler, writes Kanwal Bharti

Kahe Kabir sunahu re santon,

brahmi pare jini koyee

Jas Kasi tas Maghar usar, hirdein Ram Sati hoyee [1]

Hindi scholars have created a controversy around the death of Kabir and also on his decision to shift to Maghar saying that he did not want to give the credit for his salvation to Kashi (Benaras). The fact is that these scholars never intended to understand Kabir, so they could have only created confusion. They say that Kabir moved to Maghar from Kashi in the evening of his life because he did not want to die in Kashi. The story which has been crafted to explain his decision, according to Babu Shyam Sundar Das, goes like this.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: Kabir’s exile and death

 

 

 

 

 

About The Author

Kanwal bharti

Kanwal Bharti (born February 1953) is a progressive Ambedkarite thinker and one of the most talked-about and active contemporary writers. Dalit Sahitya Kee Avdharna and Swami Achootanand Harihar Sanchayita are his key books. He was conferred with Dr Ambedkar Rashtriya Award in 1996 and Bhimratna Puraskar in 2001

Related Articles

‘Sahitya Akademi has brought itself honour by honouring Sanjeev’
In his more than a dozen novels, Sanjeev has depicted the reality of the post-Independence Indian society. The issues and topics that he has...
In his ‘Ambedkar: A Life’, Shashi Tharoor betrays his privileged-caste naivete
After coming out with ‘Why I Am A Hindu’, Tharoor has predictably set out to look for Ambedkar’s ‘flaws’ in his biography of Ambedkar,...
Phanishwar Nath Renu – who gave centrality to the toilers of ‘the provinces’
Renu took the genre of reportage to new heights in Hindi literature. No one has been able to match him to date. In his...
Rajesh Paswan: Criticism within Dalit Literature is still in its infancy
Our Dalit writers don’t take criticism well. They begin enquiring about the caste and ideology of the critic. They evaluate criticism on these parameters,...
Memoir: When Rajendra Yadav visited Gorakhpur
Both Rajendra Yadav and Namvar Singh participated in a seminar on Premchand in Gorakhpur University. At the seminar, Namvar Singh declared that fiction was...