Amrita Pritam ( 1919 – 2005 ) was an outspoken critic of the partition of British India. As one of India’s foremost writers and poets, her scholarship deals specifically with wording the experiences of females in colonial and post-colonial South Asia. Pritam is an archive of female experiences of the partition and her Punjabi poem, Today I plead with Waris Shah ( Ajj Aakhan Waris Shah Noon ), documents her own experiences in Punjab. Waris Shah, a Punjabi Sufi saint, is remembered as the Sufi saint of love and is revered as the custodian of love ( Ishq Da Waris ).Buried in Pakistan Punjab, his shrine attracts love-struck devotees throughout the year, many of whom undertake the pilgrimage to utter their vows ( Manat ) to their beloveds . Most Punjabis, Sufis and non-Sufis alike, have committed Waris Shah’s poetry to memory and Pritam’s poem to him stands as a revealing dialogue between Sufism and females, a dialogue that breaks female silence on the violence of the partition. Pritam invokes Waris Shah as the sharer of people’s sorrows and she shares the sorrows of the females of Punjab with him. The poem asserts a female’s right to write. Pritam’s work breaks the codes of femininity. She confronts the saint directly and does not ask of a male to mediate between them: perhaps Pritam was the only female left standing as Punjab was bathed in blood? Written in Punjabi, Ajj Akhan Waris Shah Noon ( Today I Call To You Waris Shah ), stands as an ageless text and it takes on the present progressive tense, ensuring that her words are always grounded within the reader’s present reality. Innumerable renditions of the text have been performed in genres other than Qawwali. Most recently, a Pakistan rock band, Meekaal Hasan, has utilized the text to bring together the musical heritage of India and Pakistan. Pritam’s work is eternal. I read her poem as a Ghazal, an ode to love about the death of its lovers. And I would venture a step further into categorizing her work as a Sufiyana Kalam. The difference, though, is that a male is not required to speak: Pritam speaks and Waris Shah is silent. Pritam eventually does ask Waris Shah to respond to her – however, his silence serves as his response to a female’s suffering in Punjab. Pritam approaches the shrine of Waris Shah and pleads with him to rise from the dead. The poem is grounded in the unseen, a site that characterizes the individualized worship of Sufism. Imagining Waris Shah to be listening to her plea, Pritam mourns the death of the “daughters” of Punjab. She mourns that a hundred thousand of such daughters have been killed and that Waris Shah’s beloved Punjab is bathed in blood. Indeed, Pritam is asking Waris Shah to say something about the deaths, “ When one daughter of the Punjab wept you penned a thousand dirges of lament – Today a hundred thousand cry out to you to make another statement”. In essence, she is asking Waris Shah to put an end to the violence. However, Waris Shah is silent and Pritam is left in the bloody fields of Punjab. Without delving further into the poem, Pritam’s acrid accounts are quite unnerving. She is referring to the slaughter of women, a genocide that goes untold in the glorified narratives of partition. I cite this work as a Sufiyana Kalam because it has the heart of Qawwali in it : Pritam is in the raptures of an individual bond, an individual bond that speaks for various other individuals who have been denied this bond. The power of these lyrics are undeniable. Are we not left to wonder as to how much more could Sufism attain if female participation was furthered? The question, I believe, answers itself.

I say to Waris Shah today

I say to Waris Shah today, speak from your grave
And add a new page to your book of love Once one daughter of Punjab wept, and you wrote your long saga;
Today thousands weep, calling to you Waris Shah: Arise, o friend of the afflicted; arise and see the state of Punjab,
Corpses strewn on fields, and the Chenaab flowing with much blood. Someone filled the five rivers with poison,
And this same water now irrigates our soil. Where was lost the flute, where the songs of love sounded?
And all Ranjha’s brothers forgotten to play the flute. Blood has rained on the soil, graves are oozing with blood,
The princesses of love cry their hearts out in the graveyards. Today all the Quaido’ns have become the thieves of love and beauty,
Where can we find another one like Waris Shah? Waris Shah! I say to you, speak from your grave
And add a new page to your book of love.

This translation is taken from book in English by Darshan Singh Maini called STUDIES IN PUNJABI POETRY