The Loss of Rasa: Emotional Aesthetic in Sikh Literature
Changes in emotional aesthetic in Sikh literature.
From our interaction with others to our lenses toward our histories, emotions are a fundamental part of the experience of the world around us. However, cultures throughout history have understood emotions differently. These sensibilities evolve, hybridize, and change as cultures and worldviews collide. Sensibilities “interact and arise from distinctly different contexts and cover multiple meaning…[as] sensory perceptions can overlap and become bound to particular cultural, political, and social constructs” (Hacke and Musselwhite 2018, 9). Due to this notion, we must not make the mistake of assuming that emotions, which develop sensibilities, were understood by cultures similarly throughout time and space. An example of this change emerges aesthetically when comparing the retellings of the stories of the founder of Sikhi, Guru Nanak. By looking at two prestigious scholars of the Sikh tradition, one hundred years apart, profound differences emerge in the way they used emotional aesthetics in their literature.
This paper explores the question of why these differences exist. The fact that the latter scholar, Vir Singh (b.1872), was heavily influenced by the works of the former scholar, Santokh Singh (b.1787), does not minimize these differences in the usage of emotion. In exploring this topic, we cannot leave out one influential process occurring between the two: colonialism. I argue that Vir Singh’s work included in this essay differed so greatly from Santokh Singh’s in terms of the use of emotional aesthetics and methodology due to the colonial influences of the British Raj. The first section of this essay will compare a paragraph from Vir Singh’s Sri Guru Nanak Chamatkar (1928) with a verse from Santokh Singh’s Nānak Prakāsh (1824) to grasp these differences in sensibilities. Then, to understand this evolution in the literary usage of emotional aesthetics, we must first understand what changed. Thus, the second section of this essay is dedicated to rebuilding the pre-colonial world of Santokh Singh. To explore the question of why things changed, the third section discusses how the colonial state strove to curtail Indian emotions. In the final section, I explore why and how Vir Singh engaged in mimesis of colonial views on emotions through aesthetic and literary methodology.
Santokh Singh and Vir Singh: a comparison
To give context, in their respective works, both authors write about a popular story from Guru Nanak’s childhood. Given twenty rupees from his father to go out and learn how to make a profit as a trader, Guru Nanak instead fed starving holy men. His father hears of this and is angry at the waste of his hard-earned money and sets out to find the child. On finding him, Guru Nanak’s father beats him until he cries (Aulakh 2012, 154-170). It is the same story with the same events but written differently by both authors in terms of methodology and emotional aesthetic.
Santokh Singh told this story using elaborate metaphorical imagery in Nānak Prakāsh (1824). Additionally, he wrote in Braj Bhasha, one of the popular literary vernaculars of North India, with strict adherence to rhythm and rhyme.
“ਸ੍ਰੀ ਨਾਨਕ ਕੇ ਨੈਨਨ ਨੀਰਾ । ਨਿਕਸ ਚਲਯੋ ਜਿਉਂ ਮਾਨੀ ਪੀਰਾ । ਮਨਹੁ ਮੀਨ ਦੋ ਪੀਕਰਿ ਪਾਨੀ। ਬਮਨਤਿ ਸੋ ਅਸ ਪਰਿਹੀ ਜਾਨੀ।। ੨੮।।
The water out of Sri Nanak’s eyes falls out from experiencing the pain. Those tears fall out as if two fishes drink water and are then releasing it
ਭਰੇ ਕਮਲ ਦਲ ਜਲ ਜਿਉਂ ਸੋਭਾ। ਬੁੰਦਨ ਪਰ ਮੁਕਤਾ ਛਬਿ ਲੋਭਾ। ਸੋਹਤ ਪਰਿ ਗਏ ਨੀਲ ਕਪੋਲਾ। ਜਿਉਂ ਉਤਪਲ ਪਰ ਅਲਿਨ ਅਡੋਲਾ।।੨੯।।
Water flows from the side of lotus blossom and glimmers. Tears from his eyes are beautified as if pearls shine. The bruises on his cheeks show beauty as if there are bees sitting on lotus flowers.
ਕਿਧੋਂ ਹੁਤੋ ਅਕਲੰਕ ਮਯੰਕਾ। ਮ੍ਰਿਗਛਾਲਾ ਤੇ ਭਯੋ ਸੁਅੰਕਾ । ਪਹੁੰਚੀ ਨਿਕਟ ਨਾਨਕੀ ਤੂਰਨ। ਪਿਤ ਕਰ ਗਹਯੋ ਜੁ ਰਿਸ ਮੈਂ ਪੂਰਨ।। ੩੦।।
As if the flawless moon had the shadow of a deerskin cast onto it. And then Nanki went and held her angered father’s hand “
One notices the focus on making the event special and meaningful for the reader or listener of the poetry. A violent event is turned beautiful as bruises become bumblebees, tears become the shine emitted by pearls, and the Guru ‘s body represents a flawless moon. Later on, the bruises are compared to deerskins, a sign of saintliness in Indian iconography.
On the other hand, Vir Singh wrote Sri Guru Nanak Chamatkar (1928) in Punjabi prose without the use of poetry. In this single instance, the lack of imagery and certain notions of Christian-like innocence become clear:
ਨੈਣਾਂ ਤੋਂ ਨਿੱਕਾ ਨਿੱਕਾ ਟੋਪਾ ਨੀਰ ਦਾ ਕਿਰਦਾ ਹੈ, ਪਰ ਬੁੱਲ੍ਹਾਂ ਤੇ ਚੁੱਪ ਹੈ ਸਰੀਰ ਅਡੋਲ ਖੜਾ ਹੈ। ਇਸ ਮੂਰਤੀ ਵਲ ਤੱਕਣਾ। ਕੁਮਾਰ ਅਵਸਥਾ, ਕੋਮਲ ਲਾਡਲਾ ਸਰੀਰ, ਅੰਦਰ ਰੱਬੀ ਨੂਰ, ਅਰਸ਼ ਕੁਰਸ਼ ਦੀ ਜੋਤ, ਉਹ ਜਗਤ ਦੀ ਭੁੱਖ ਦਾ ਦੁਖ ਦੂਰ ਕਰਨ ਦੇ ਅਪ੍ਰਾਧ ਵਿਚ ਦੋਸ਼ੀ ਹੋਇਆ ਖੜਾ ਹੈ। ਕਿਵੇਂ ਅਡੋਲ ਖੜਾ ਹੈ, ਕਿਵੇਂ ਚੁੱਪ ਹੈ, ਕਿਵੇਂ ਸਿਰ ਨਿਹੁੜਾਇਆ ਹੈ, ਕਿਵੇਂ ਨੈਣਾਂ ਤੋਂ ਮੋਤੀ ਕਿਰ ਰਹੇ, ਕਿਵੇਂ ਚਪੇੜ ਤੇ ਚਪੇੜ ਪੈ ਰਹੀ ਹੈ, ਕਿਵੇਂ ਇਕ ਹੱਥ ਸੱਜੇ ਹੱਥ ਫੇਰ ਖੱਬੇ ਉਲਰ ਉਲਰ ਕੇ ਪੈਂਦਾ ਹੈ?
“Small amounts of tears come from his eyes buts his lips are shut and his body is still. Look at this appearance. Soft and dear body, inside the light of God, the light of providence, is standing as a culprit for the offence of making the pain of hunger of the world go away. How still he stands, how quiet he is, how his head is bent, how tears are falling, how he is being slapped from right hand and then left hand?”
Immediately, one notices the language used to convey Guru Nanak’s tears. There is less emphasis on the tears compared to Santokh Singh’s metre. However, within the text, Vir Singh expresses two extremes: innocence and delicateness versus violence and cruelty. The explicit use of themes of innocence and delicateness are utilized in relation to Guru Nanak’s child-body while the violence is outside of him.. Unlike Santokh Singh, the violence and cruelty does not compliment the Guru’s divinity as if the bruises are bumblebees on a lotus flower. Instead, the event occuring is antagonistic towards the Guru. It is the same story, yet it is so different at the same time. What changed?
Santokh Singh’s Pre-Colonial World
To understand colonial change, I will first explain the pre-colonial emotional world. Thus, in this section, I shed light on the historical context that encircled Santokh Singh. Santokh Singh was born in 1787, a few years before the rise of the Lahore Darbar, also known as the Sikh Empire (1799-1849). He began his education in Amritsar under Giani Sant Singh, another renowned scholar of the time. On completing his education, Santokh Singh entered the patronage of Raja Udai Singh of the neighbouring kingdom of Kaithal and spent ten years writing his magnum opus, Sūraj Prakāsh (1843) in kāvya (Indian poetic form) which focuses on the history of the ten Sikh Gurus (Singh 2023, 151). Nānak Prakāsh (1824), the focus of this paper, is the first part of this massive text. According to Jvala Singh, “in the realm of Sikh historiography, the Sūraj Prakāsh was a titan of a text,” (2023, 152) and formed the basis for most Sikh historical works thereafter, including those by Vir Singh. Santokh Singh’s work was not only foundational in Sikh historiography, but it was also written in the context of wider Indian historiographical tradition.
To the Victorian British historian such as Max Macauliffe, Santokh Singh’s way of writing can be hardly understood as anything close to history (Singh 2023, 152). More modern historians such as Harjot Oberoi, however, argue that Santokh Singh was part of an indigenous Indian historiographic tradition and that “while deeply concerned the standard items that appear within every historical repertoire… still chose to articulate the passage of time in large units of poetic utterance.” (Oberoi 2022, 13). It was historicity submerged into the intuitive ocean of poetry. Within this poetic utterance, narratives were composed using to invoke various emotions within readers and listeners. The goal was for a historical “recitation that titled hearts and minds towards specific affective structures and deep emotional states.” (Oberoi 2022, 13). Behind this aim was a long tradition of aesthetic theory known as rasa.
Rasa had a long and complex history in India with various treatises written on the matter. The most basic definition of rasa is “taste,” (Pollock 2016, 4). yet Sheldon Pollock believes defining it as “emotional-aesthetic force” captures its use (24). Additionally, Pollock asserts that this theory of emotion is tied intimately with Indian strains of philosophy as a plethora of various textual traditions emerged in the subcontinent (XIV).
Rasa is a systematic conceptualization of emotion contained within art modes that included the “foundational (ālambana) and stimulant (uddīpana-) factors (vibhāva), transitory emotions (vyabhicāri-bhāva), psychophysical responses (sāttvika-bhāva), and so on (XV). The poet imbues his work through the use of bhāva (emotion) that would be registered within the verses through verbal, physical, psychophysical, and scenic means. Both the words and the subject of the poetry would contain such bhāva (6). Indian poets would utilize tools for expressing emotion like figurative figures (alankāraśātra) and implicature (dhvāni) to express the various rasa.
Harjot Oberoi further applies rasa theory to historiography. Pre-colonial historians wrote in prose that connected their use of classifications and history within the medium of emotion. Oberoi argues that rather than a split between the rationality of the mind and the emotions of the body, these historians combined both using aesthetics that were not only concerned with beauty but with “questioning, judging, refinement, surveillance, analysis, and pedagogic arrangements for learning.” (2022, 16). Thus, Santokh Singh, the historian-poet, wrote in a world where emotion and rationality came together in perfect harmony.
An educated writer like Santokh Singh would have studied such sciences in depth and would have engrained rasa into his writings as he experienced the emotions and passions stemming from his pen alongside the historical events in focus. He wrote to glorify Guru Nanak, even in the Guru’s moments of suffering such as his beating from his father. Even suffering was deemed beautiful and complimented the saintliness and divinity of Guru Nanak. An acceptance of the events naturally like a bumblebee on a lotus flower expressed through imagery invoking rasa. Ultimately, Santokh Singh’s Nanak Prakāsh was part of “an autonomous domain of art in India before the coming of European modernity” (Pollock, 2016, 44). However, the domination of British academic and cultural worldviews initiated changes in how Sikhs wrote about their history.
The Colonization of Emotional Aesthetic
Antonio Gramsci theorized that power is exhibited at two levels: domination and intellectual or moral leadership (Viswanathan 1988, 85). In the colonizing mission of India, the British had used both measures. Many have heard of great battles and conflicts that occurred over the period such as the Anglo-Sikh Wars and the 1857 Mutiny. However, the colonizing process surrounding intellectual and moral dimesions is less heard of. How did the British rule over such a large and diverse subcontinent and how did this translate to the use of emotional aesthetic in the writing of history?
Margrit Pernau proposes that perhaps the memory of the violence and carnage of 1857 led the British to believe that the Indian subject had too much passion and that “it fell to the British to prevent the worst excesses, either by force, or where possible, by cautious education and slow improvement (2011, 236). Furthermore, Gauri Viswanathan argues that British policy believed that it must subjugate the natives by making them believe, as James Farish, the governor of Bombay, put it” we [the British] are more wise, more just, more humane” (1988, 86). Thus, to ensure colonial rule, the British infused a sense of inferiority and distrust in native notions of self, customs, and scholarship.
At first, there was a desire to allow Indian culture and literature to prosper. Indian culture was to studied and categorized under the notion of “Orientalism,” which was thought of as a method of closing the cultural gap between the colonial state and its colonized subjects (87). Things changed with the arrival of the idea of Anglicanism in the 1830s, which advocated British learning and the suppression of native methods and structures of education. The British East India Company found itself failing to rule India efficiently as critics blamed the policy of Orientalism. It was argued that Indian modes of thinking corrupted the rational colonial system of rule (88). Under Anglicanism, schools in India began teaching English literature to assert European notions of morality and rationality. Through this literature, the British and Christian missionaries “demonstrated the power and authority of the Western mind” (100) over the “irrational” and “passionate” eastern subjects.
In the Punjab, specifically, William D. Arnold, the Director of Public Instruction from 1856, believed that the empire carried a sense of moral responsibility in terms of education. According to the director’s reports, Indian methods of learning focused on oral repetition and “without relating to it” (Kumar 2005, 53). Authorities had viewed such methods as useless and without any moral benefit. Thus, Indians needed a moral stimulation through the process of making reading a process of subjective sense-making (52-54). Krishna Kumar argues that in Europe, intellectuals argued that oral works obscured the true meanings of a text. Works in writing, however, fostered rationality as it provided the ability of contention. Thus, literacy itself, “was an important means whereby this political economy was transmitted under the auspices of colonization” (54). To bring change, In this context, Santokh Singh’s poetic and emotional works catered towards the old ways of learning such as oral repetition that the British hoped to stamp out through literacy.
Furthermore, in the dimension of literature, factual reading and emotion were not to be combined as it was called the “Affective Fallacy.” This referred to the idea that involving emotions in writing could not aid in the production of knowledge (Pollock, 2016, 44-45). Through the perspective of various European writers such W.K. Wimsatt, Monroe Beardsley, and Rene Welleck believed that objective knowledge could not be comprehended through an emotive approach such as poetry (44-45). Even Plato, one of the perceived founding fathers of “Western Civilization” argued for the separation of poetry and and knowledge and “thought it best to ban poets from his proposed ideal Republic” (Oberoi 2022, 19). Thus, as the British studied Indian historiography, it was deemed that “Indians lacked a sense of history and or historical consciousness” (19) due to the infusion of emotion and poetry into their historical writings. In terms of Sikh writers, the British Sikh historian, Max Macauliffe, argued that it was because a linkage to an emotional agenda that Santokh Singh’s works could not be viewed as a legitimate and rational historical work (19). Such notions were inserted into the Indian populace through schools as students wrote essays on the falsehoods contained within passionate native texts as they glorified Christian and rational knowledge (Viswanathan 1988, 102).
From learning about the greatness of British knowledge and morality, and supposed Indian inferiority, the natives developed Jean Dennison'‘s theory of “Affective Flow”. Distrust in the colonized or the subjugated is a symptom of imperial control on the affective flow as a tool of hegemon (Dennison 2018, 44). Trust in the superiority of colonizers emerged and distrust in themselves settled in as school and academic institutions argued against native frameworks of knowledge. Thus, the British successfully disrupted the Indian view of the world. Forsaking their pre-colonial understandings, Indian subjects embodied British views in an act of mimesis.
Michael Taussig observes the process of mimesis among the indigenous of Panama who began categorizing and viewing the world through colonial concepts such as racism. Through transcultural interactions and colonial learning, the Cuna people embodied the notions of racism proposed to them by their colonizers (Taussig 2018, 145). In the context of Sikhs, Arvind-pal Mandair finds the same phenomenon occurring in elite Sikh scholarly circles. During the British Raj, various Sikh reform movements emerged. Many of these reformers viewed themselves through the “Western Gaze” as Sikh and European scholars engaged in transcultural dialogue pertaining to history, philosophy, religion, and morality (Mandair 2022, 9). We now find ourselves in the contextual setting of Vir Singh, an elite Sikh reformer.
Vir Singh: Mimesis
Vir Singh was a story of resistance and reformation. He was the personification of crossroad of British and Sikh scholarship. His vast number of works were commonly labelled as modern in form but “Oriental” in spirit (Malhotra and Murphy 2023, 2). As the writer of the first Punjabi novel, Sundari, Vir Singh played an important role in the propagation of Sikh and Punjabi identity in the colonial and political context of the time (20). This complex arena of identity politics led to a mimesis in the epistemological view of religion and writing despite his genuine attempts to resist colonila hegemony through strengthening boundaries of Sikh identity.
Vir Singh’s education exemplifies the transcultural interaction of Sikh scholars and British education. Vir Singh came from a family with a rich history of pre-colonial Sikh scholars who were educated in Braj Bhasha. His maternal grandfather was a widely known scholar who lived in Amritsar among the same group led by Santokh Singh’s mentor, Gian Singh (Singh 2023, 154). Despite his familial connections to the pre-colonial world shared with Santokh Singh, Vir Singh was formally educated at the hands of those who pushed Anglicanism.
Vir Singh picked up novel writing while studying at Amritsar Church Mission School. There, he conquered European literature and mastered “the values and ideals of the Victorian age (Jakobsh 2023, 214). In these schools, he learned English and Western science that “overshadowed traditional Sikh education” (214). Even the writing method he picked up to propagate Sikh ideals was through the novel, a clear act of methodological mimesis.
The novel, a genre from Europe, emerged among the intellectual elites of Vir Singh’s time. In this form of writing, authors “attempted to mirror life, presenting recognizable spaces, mundane activities, and linear time” (Malhotra 2023, 68). On the other hand, Santokh Singh and his contemporary writers wrote in ways that “emphasized the unexpected, the miraculous, the awe-inspiring, and the episodic” (68). In a transcultural context, Vir Singh picked up the foreign novel format over the indigenous poetic tradition in an act of methodological mimesis.
The process of mimesis does not only end at his chosen medium. In fact, it is also present in his usage of emotion and symbolism. Clearly, Vir Singh does not forsake emotions in his writing like many European scholars would prefer. One can see the use of themes that render the reader feeling an experience of various emotions as young Guru Nanak is beaten by his father. However, there is fundamental change in the use of emotion. As Punjabis adopted the novel to write in the vernacular of their region, a European and Christian inspired aesthetic followed behind closely.
The narrative style of Sri Nanak Chamatkar is like that of a novel. However, it attempts to capture the spirit of divinity and spirituality contained within Santokh Singh’s writings. Despite being influenced by Santokh Singh in terms of subject matter, the way in which emotion is infused into the story is clearly Victorian. In the retelling of Guru Nanak’s cruel beating from his father, Vir Singh recasts the story from a strictly moral perspective. It is as if there is a profound wrong occurring which is very different than Santokh Singh’s aesthetic of acceptance and beauty despite the beatings. Guru Nanak is described in a manner one might imagine appropriate for the sacrifice of the body of Jesus, a body that is divine and delicate. Though the aesthetics of divinity and delicateness emerge in Santokh Singh’s version as well, there is a sense of pity and tragedy in Vir Singh’s. The world is expressed as evil and immoral containing notions of original sin. Furthermore, Vir Singh’s depiction of Guru Nanak plays on delicateness similar to Victorian notions of pre-pubescent purity as such innocence is attacked for “the offence of allaying the suffering of hunger of the world” (Singh 1928, 68). Before the rise of the hegemony of British aesthetics, Santokh Singh’s poetry deemed even such suffering as beautiful as bees and lotus flowers colour the imagination of the listener and the reciter. With Vir Singh's use of the novel, Victorian aesthetics emerge in his retelling of this event, thus, replacing the once established school of Indian rasa.
It is important to note that Vir Singh did not idolize the British. His works were meant to revitalize notions of Sikh identity. As he wrote Guru Nanak’s hagiography in the format of a novel, he shed European notions of scientific history and chose to incorporate emotional aesthetics to propagate Sikh values, even if that emotion was derived from Victorian ideals. It is disingenuous to disregard mention of his various works on pre-colonial Sikh texts such as the annotating of Santokh Singh’s Sūraj Prakāsh as examples of his impulse of resistance. Through this annotation project, Vir Singh argued that Santokh Singh was on par with contemporary scientific historians (Singh 2023, 160). Ultimately, Vir Singh as an author and scholar presented a paradox. He was an example of a resistance as much as he was of mimesis as he sought to revive pre-colonial texts and contextualize them in his own time.
Conclusion
Vir Singh was subject to a British colonial education and therefore colonial influence which affected his use of emotional aesthetic and method of writing. In comparing Vir Singh’s Sri Guru Nanak Chamaktar (1928) with Santokh Singh’s Nānak Prakāsh (1824), we find the same story expressed in different ways one hundred years later as sensibilities evolved. These sensibilities changed due to European based learning under the colonial policy of Anglicanism. Santokh Singh lived in a pre-colonial era where rasa was an important part of historical writing. Later on, the British colonial state incorporated European notions of scholarship and literature which influenced writers such as Vir Singh. However, emotion driven writing did not disappear as authors such as Vir Singh used Victorian sensibilities to tell the same stories.
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Note:
This essay is an edited and revised version of an original work. The original work was produced for the class HIS493: Advanced Topics in Global History at the University of Toronto (Mississauga) in Summer 2023 by the same writer.