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Introduction
by Dr. Shashishekhar Toshkhani
Kashmiri Bhakti poetry of the 19th century, or Lila poetry as it is more commonly called,
touches its highest watermark in the spirituality-soaked lyrics of Krishna joo Razdan.
What makes him stand apart from other Kashmiri Bhakti poets of the age, or poets
belonging to other literary traditions for that matter, is his highly developed sense of
music and his unusual concern for acoustic values. In no other Kashmiri poet’s work do
we find poetry and music so intimately blended and used with such tremendous effect.
Having a deeply sensitive ear for the resonance of words, Krishna joo Razdan excels in
weaving delightful symphonies around subtle emotions and delicate feelings. It is in this
process that he has translated his spiritual anguish into some of the sweetest songs of
the Kashmiri language. Not that he makes any effort for it. Musical expression comes
naturally and spontaneously to him, giving his compositions an appeal that penetrates
into the innermost recesses of our soul. No wonder, therefore, that some of the best
Kashmiri musicians have set them to tune, making them an essential part of their
repertoire of songs.
But it is not just the magic of verbal music, the “melodious lucidity” of his poems, so to say, that
makes Krishna joo Razdan the great saint-poet that he is. It is in the way the saint and the poet in
him fuse with each other and find expression in his lyrical outpourings –sweet, lucid, musical--that the
secret of his greatness lies. Soaring high in the realm of mystic experience, Krishna joo shares his
insights with us, making them accessible to us through sonic presentations. And even as we sway to
the racy rhythms and lilting cadences of his verses, their intense devotional content moves us to
spiritual ecstasy. Thus we find Krishna joo Razdan’s “soulful lyricism” powered by his devotional
ardour as well as creative intuition.
Krishna joo Razdan and his great predecessors Paramanand and Prakashram Kurigami gave Kashmiri
Bhakti poetry new dimensions, making it reflective of the true genius of the Kashmiri language. The
significance of the quintessential Kashmiriness of these poets can hardly be missed, for in their times
the influence of Persian on Kashmiri language and literature had become so pervasive that Kashmir’s
own literary tradition seemed to have lost its importance and relevance. Persian literary forms like
the Ghazal and Masnavi, poetic conventions, metres, metaphors, imagery, symbolism and even
Persian legends and lore were grafted upon Kashmiri sensibility, shutting out almost everything that was originally, truly and creatively Kashmiri. There was nothing much surprising in this domination of
Persian on Kashmiri literary culture, keeping in view the fact that Persian had been the court
language for nearly five hundred years continuously and by the 19th century had become the
language of the mental make-up of the Maktab- educated Kashmiri elite. This elite had developed a
particular craving for romantic tales from the far-off Persia and it was to this section of the population
that the Masnavi writers were trying to cater. Every poet who could flaunt a little Persian thought it
profitable to try his hand at Masnavi writing even though it would be a translated, abridged or
straightaway plagiarized version of some Persian original. No one seemed to mind the spurious, stale,
superficial stuff churned in the name of narrative poetry, reeking of the flavour of decadence. Heavily
laden with Persian and Arabic vocabulary, the language of these Masnavis was artificial and wooden
with hardly anything Kashmiri about it except a vocable or two here and there. You could as well call
it linguistic subversion. Krishna joo Razdan could not completely put a halt to it, but he did succeed
in bringing back some of the original glow and colloquial charm of the Kashmiri language by choosing
the Bhakti experience rooted in the tradition of Kashmiri spirituality as the theme of his poetry.
In fact, it was through this choice that he made his greatest statement. By this single act of his he
revived the long lost contacts between Kashmiri poetry and the perennial mainstream of Indian
literary tradition. But it is not as though the Bhakti wave rolled over and reached Kashmir for the first
time in Krishna joo Razdan’s age. He emerged as a foremost representative of what can be called the
second phase of the Bhakti upsurge in Kashmiri poetry, but the tradition started five hundred years
before him with the celebrated Shaiva poetess Lalleshwari. Lalleshwari’s arrival on the scene in the
14th century has been hailed as the greatest event in the cultural and spiritual life of Kashmir in the
medieval times. Known more popularly as Lal Ded, she made the essence of Kashmir Shaivism
available to the common man in colloquial Kashmiri, influencing the Kashmiri psyche as no other poet
has ever done. To put it in the words of Paul E. Murphy, she is “the chief exponent of devotional or
emotion-oriented Triadism”. She advocates in her vaaks or verse- sayings the path of love as the
highest path to reach Shiva even as she harmonizes love with gnosticism and upholds the Shaiva
philosophy of absolute non-dualism between Man and God. The roots of her mysticism, however, can
be traced to Bhatta Narayana and Utpaladeva, Sanskrit poets of the 9th and 10th century respectively,
and not to the so-called Sufi influence which is sought to be foisted on her. There are remarkable
similarities between these two Sanskrit poets and Lal Ded, all the three being the most prominent
representatives of the first phase of the Bhakti upsurge in Kashmir. Like the Virshaiva vachana poetry
of Kannada, this phase was exclusively devoted to Shiva. Unlike the Virshaiva poets, however, the
early monistic Shaiva poet’s God in Kashmir is nirguna or attributeless and, therefore, impersonal.“The Triadic or Kashmir Shaiva system does not adhere to a personal God”, explains Murphy, “ that is
to a God whose subsistent individuality is explained over and above His conscious or intelligential
nature”. The name Shiva that it gives to Him connotes a non-personal entity.
Devotion to Vishnu as a personal God also formed an equally important Bhakti experience for Kashmir
in the early medieval period, but it does not seem to have found its expression in Kashmiri poetry of
the time. At least, no examples of such poetry are extant. On the other hand, there is a considerable
corpus of Sanskrit works existing in Kashmir in which we find the exploits of Vishnu described,
particularly in his incarnations as Rama and Krishna, with devotion and love directed towards them.
Kshemendra, the great Kashmiri polyglot of the 11th century, wrote, apart from his ‘Ramayana
Manjari’ and ‘Mahabharata Manjari’, a beautiful poetic work known as ‘Dashavatara Charit’ a whole
century ahead of Jayadeva’s well known Dashavatara hymn of the ‘Gita Govinda’. In this work by
Kshemendra there is a beautiful lyric in which he has poignantly described Gopis’ feelings on Krishna’s
departure for Mathura. According to Dr. Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, well-known Hindi scholar, the
tradition of singing devotional verses celebrating Krishna’s exploits was prevalent in “distant Kashmir”
in the 9th –10th century itself, as it was in other parts of the country like Bengal and Orissa.
Kshemendra, Dwivedi presumes, had heard such songs in his neighbourhood.
What is more interesting is that Kshemendra has mentioned the name of Radha in his ‘Dashavatara
Charit’. Anandavardhana, the great aesthete who lived in the 10th century Kashmir, has also
mentioned her name. This is quite significant for it shows not only that Radha’s name was familiar to
Sanskrit poets of Kashmir in the 9th-10th century itself but also that the devotional lyrics they
composed could well have paved the way for the upsurge of Bhakti in the whole of north India. It is
equally probable that some sort of a tradition of composing Bhakti songs existed in the regional
dialect of Kashmiri as well in that age. However, this tradition seems to have blossomed into a fullfledged
and distinct trend towards the 18th-19th century only particularly with the arrival of poets like
Paramanand, Prakashram Kurigami and Krishna joo Razdan.
Coming to Krishna joo Razdan again, it must be noted that the saguna and nirguna as well as the
Shaiva and Vaishnava currents of the Bhakti movement converge in him, free from all sectarian bias
as he was. We find him directing his devotion and love towards both Shiva and Krishna in his verses
like the great Maithili poet Vidyapati, both being his chosen deities. And even while doing so, he
identifies them with the Highest Reality, the nirguna brahma. He sees no incompatibility between his
belief in a personal and determinate God and an impersonal view of realityWe shall take up Krishna joo Razdan’s concept of Bhakti later, but suffice it to point out here that he
interpreted everything eventually in terms of the philosophical doctrines of Kashmir Shaivism. Yet his
poetry is universal in its appeal, humanitarian ideals and high spiritual values being central to his
concerns as a poet. Saying so it must not be forgotten that Krishna joo was equally a product of the
political and cultural climate that prevailed in his times. He lived and wrote in an age when Kashmir
had just passed into the hands of Dogra rulers after a brief interregnum of Sikh rule preceded by the
nightmarish rule of the brutal and bigoted Afghan governors at whose hands Kashmiri Hindu masses
had suffered worst religious persecution. Although the Dogra rule did provide some respite, the scars
of the wounds inflicted by the barbarous Afghans had not yet healed up, the horrors and holocausts
of their reign continuing to haunt the racial memory of the hapless Kashmiri Hindus. It was in such
circumstances that Krishna joo Razdan addressed his sweet and soothing devotional songs to a kind
and benevolent God, who is the ultimate refuge of the pious, protector of the cosmic order and
destroyer of the evil-doers. This was a kind of a social role that Krishna joo assigned to Lila poetry
and it gave the Kashmiris the succor and solace they badly needed at that time. The concepts of
ishtadeva or a personal God, avatara or incarnation and lila or God’s divine play, that are integral to
Bhakti philosophy, provided poets like Krishna joo with a great scope to present God in the human
context. It is a God with whom it is easier to relate and who can be personally approached for
deliverance from sorrow and suffering. Another concept taken from the same symbology was that of
asura or the demon -- an embodiment of evil in all its dimensions whose description tended to evoke
in the Hindu mind the image of the tyrannical and savage rulers from whose clutches they had just
been saved. It also reinforced the images of incarnate Rama and Krishna as the deliverers of
mankind. It would also be relevant to point out here that under the Dogra rulers, temple- building
activities had started again in Kashmir after an interregnum of about 500 years of Muslim rule and
this gave further impetus to faith in the two incarnations of Vishnu, particularly Rama who was their
tutelary deity. To the harassed and terrorized Hindu masses, the idea of some superhuman power
coming to their rescue and providing them with shelter after centuries of oppression was quite
comfortable and reassuring. The Lila poetry of Krishna joo Razdan and other Bhakti poets seemed to
provide them with just this assurance at the higher transcendental level if not the mundane.
In this sense, Krishna joo Razdan was not just a poet lost in spiritual reveries, unaware of or
indifferent to the social and political, or even economic, conditions of his times. We can call him a
great interpreter of the spiritual and cultural crisis of the Kashmir of his times just like Lal Ded -- a
cultural icon of the Kashmiris. And yet how ironical it is that although so near to our own times we know very little about the actual facts of Krishna joo Razdan’s life. No authentic and well-researched
biography of the great saint–poet has been written so far in any language though attempts to stitch
together some random pieces of biographical information about him have been made here and there.
For this, the indifference (and should we say ineptitude?) of Kashmiri scholars is as much to blame
as lack of interest on the part of the present descendants of Krishna joo. What is even more
saddening is that the little information we have is more of the nature of hagiography than biography.
Though this is not something unusual in case of saints and spiritual persons, this leaves us greatly
handicapped to understand as to how his personality developed both as a saint and a poet. George
Grierson, whose edition of the poet’s magnum opus ‘Shiva Parinay’ was published with a Sanskrit
translation by Pandit Mukundram Shastri by the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in six volumes from
1913 to1924, says hardly anything about his life. Somnath Veer does make a bold attempt in his
edition of Krishna joo Razdan’s complete works, published by the J&K Academy of Art, Culture and
Languages, to come out with some more details, and so does Arjan Dev Majboor in his monograph
written for the Sahitya Akademi. But they too do not seem to have gone much beyond description of
miraculous anecdotes, allowing hagiography to prevail upon biographical facts. Then we have a
three-volume edition of Krishna joo Razdan’s complete works brought out by his grandson Pandit
Shyam Lal Razdan in the Devanagari script, but it does not shed any significant light on the actual
facts of his life. This only leaves us groping for facts about the key events that shaped his life and
personality. Nothing meaningful seems to have been actually done in this direction so far. Even the
exact dates of his birth and death have not been finally settled. It is generally believed that Krishna
joo was born in the year 1907 of the Vikram Era corresponding to1850 CE and left his mortal coil in
1982 Vikrami corresponding to 1926 of the Christian Era. But scholars differ considerably about the
exact day and date on which he was born. Thus, Somnath Veer gives his date of birth as August 19,
1850 and of death as November 23, 1925, while according to Arjan Dev Majboor, who claims to have
worked hard on it, the correct dates are birth: August 24, 1850, and death: December 4, 1926
respectively. According to Shyamlal Razdan, he was born on August 19, 1850 and passed away on
December 13, 1926. The problem is that the dates have been recorded by his descendants as well as
disciples according to the lunar calendar and this is what has created a lot of confusion for it is
difficult to convert these into their exact corresponding dates in accordance with the solar Christianvaluable bit of research in this connection recently. The death, according to them, occurred on
Margashirsha Shukla Ashtami, 1982 Vikrami, that is November 23, 1925. This means that Krishna joo
Razdan lived for 77 years and not 75 years as is generally believed.
Some broad facts of his life can, however, be scooped from the little information we have available.
Krishnadas – the honorific ‘joo’ being added later in his life to his name when he acquired maturity
and became known as a poet and a saint – was born to Ganesh Raina, a rich landlord of Vanpuh, an
idyllic little village hugging the town of Qazi Gund on the Srinagar-Jammu highway. Ganesh Raina
was son of Lacchman Raina and owned large areas of agricultural land granted to him by the Dogra
Maharaja Ranbirsingh for his services. His fields came to be known as ‘Khirman-e-Ganesh’ or the
fields of Ganesh and constitute the present village of Ganeshpura. He used to visit Lahore frequently
in connection with his official work and had acquired quite a prestige and clout in the society. In
keeping with his social position, Ganesh Raina ardently desired his son to get the best education that
was possible in those days and so he engaged quite efficient tutors who imparted to him knowledge
of Sanskrit, Persian, astrology, mathematics and other subjects in vogue at that time. But Krishna
had a voracious appetite for knowledge and to satisfy it he depended on his own learning which he
acquired from personal study of various subjects including Shastric lore.
Ganesh Raina sought the company of holy men and itinerant Sadhus and would often visit them
taking the young Krishna along. He listened keenly to their discourses and participated
enthusiastically in the singing of bhajans and kirtans. Krishna enjoyed such visits thoroughly and
cherished listening to the bhajans and the talk of God. It was in this manner that the seeds of deep
devotion and dedication for God sprouted in Krishna’s mind in the impressionable years of early
childhood.There is a popular anecdote indicating that Krishna had started having mystical experiences from the
time he was a small child. It is said that once his parents went to take part in the annual festival of
Jyeshtha Ashtami held at Manzgam at the shrine of the Goddess Rajnya (pronounced ‘Ragnya’ in
Kashmiri), the tutelary deity of the family. Since the entire distance of 8 kilometres had to be
traversed on foot, there being no transport available to the place those days, they did not take little
Krishna and his sister along, leaving them at home in the charge of a servant. But the moment
Krishna got a whiff of it, he felt miserable and started crying bitterly. The servant took him to the
riverside to divert his attention but the boy remained inconsolable and refused to eat or drink. He
went on crying till he fell asleep and in his sleep he saw a dream in which a divine figure -- Goddess Ragnya herself attired in all her finery-- approached him and taking him into her arms wiped his tears
and offered him a bowl of very tasty khir. When his father returned from the pilgrimage, Krishna told
him about his dream but the amazed father asked him not to reveal it to anyone. It is said that at
that moment he uttered a few devotional verses in praise of the Goddess and that was the beginning
of his career as a poet.
By the time Krishna Razdan was 21, he started writing poetry regularly and soon became popular as a
writer of devotional lyrics. As his popularity increased, some of his co-disciples (he had taken a Guru
by then) became very jealous of him and spread the canard that Krishna Razdan plagiarized poems
written by other poets. When the Guru came to know to about it he decided to find out the truth for
himself. And once when he was making a trip across the Dal Lake on board of a houseboat together
with his disciples, he suddenly asked Krishna joo to recite a poem extempore describing the lake and
its beautiful environs. To everyone’s surprise and to the Guru’s great delight Krishna joo rose and
started reciting verse after verse of what was later regarded as one of his most profound poems,
words gushing from his mouth like the flowing waters of a mountain stream of his native village. It
was a long poem in which through juxtaposition of a series of wonderful and most apt metaphors he
captured the charm of the lake and its natural scenery, each metaphor indicating at the same time
deeper spiritual meanings:
Sar ko^r yi samsaar naduru`y draav
Dal ma hoshu` tsyet kiy pamposh chhaav
[I’ve discovered the secret of the world
It’s very much like the lotus stalk –
Ephemeral!
But lose not your inner poise
Enjoy the beauty of the lotuses that bloom inside you.]
With their mouths gaping, his detractors heard this spontaneous outpouring of most wonderful poetry
and they were effectively silenced.
Krishna joo Razdan was a saint but he had not renounced the world, nor did he give up his duties
towards his family. He was a householder saint, which is not exactly an oxymoron for there is a long
tradition of such saints in Kashmir. He looked at life and the world with the eyes of a detached
person, his ideal in this respect being, in his own words, “ba`sti manz vanvaa`si roz”(Live in this world as the forest dweller lives in the forest). The transient pleasures of the world, its glitter and
glamour held no attraction for him, his aim in life being to seek the Ultimate Reality through devotion.
But though detachment was his mantra, he was not indifferent to the human condition, his deep
awareness of it finding expression in many of his poems. Krishna joo was also fully conscious of the
miseries that an exploitative social and economic system brought upon the common people of his
native land. He had direct knowledge of it for he did a stint as the headman of his village for a brief
period, only to realize soon that the responsibility thrust upon him was too intrusive on his spiritual
pursuits. Turning his back on mundane affairs, he now remained absorbed in God- consciousness all
the time, composing lyrics suffused with intense Bhakti and love directed towards Shiva and Krishna
and the Mother Goddess in her various local manifestations. Wearing his trade-mark pheran and
turban, and with a saffron and sandalwood-paste tilak on his forehead, he looked every inch the
saint that he was and attained a spiritual dignity that drew people to him from every quarter. Singing
his Lilas in chorus and dancing in ecstasy, they gathered round him overwhelmed by religious fervour
and sought spiritual and moral guidance from him.
Among those who became ardent admirers of Krishna joo Razdan was Pratap Singh, the Maharaja of
Kashmir. Greatly impressed by his versatility as a saint, a scholar, a poet and an astrologer, Pratap
Singh expressed the desire to meet him and sent a formal invitation to him. Krishna joo Razdan
accepted the invitation and came to meet him at Tulmul, the holy shrine of Ragnya Bhagwati,
Kashmiri Pandits’ most popular deity. It is said that the saint showed to Pratap Singh the water of the
holy pond of the shrine actually change its colour and this further reinforced the Maharaja’s reverence
for him. Thereafter Pratap Singh made it a point to visit him at Vanpuh whenever he moved to
Jammu from Srinagar or from Srinagar to Jammu with his court. He also kept a well-furnished boat
at the disposal of Krishna joo Razdan so that it would be convenient for him to visit Srinagar
whenever he so wanted.
And the trips that the saint-poet made to Srinagar were frequent enough, for he felt very happy to be
in the company of his close disciples there, foremost among whom was Pandit Kanth joo Sharabi of
Shala Kadal. Other prominent disciples of his were Raghunath Mattoo, Jankinath Misri and Harihar
Kaul. Pandit Kanth joo Sharabi had a very melodious voice and he loved to sing his master’s songs at
the musical soirees organized quite frequently by Krishna joo’s group of disciples which would often
last till the wee hours. Krishna joo would come himself all the way from Vanpuh to participate in
some of these enchanting evenings on several occasions to the joy of his followers and then they
would become unforgettable events. As Kanth joo sang hearts would melt and the listeners would go into raptures, forgetting the sense of time and their own selves, experiencing pure spiritual bliss.
Kanth joo continued such singing sessions long after Krishna joo gave up his mortal frame, enthralling
his own group of disciples with the master’s sonorous and intensely devotional lyrics and often
transporting them into an indescribable state of God-consciousness. A regular presence at such
spiritually intoxicating choral singing assemblies was that of Pandit Kailash Nath Fotedar of Sathu
Barbarshah, Srinagar, who was one of the foremost disciples of Pandit Kanth joo Sharabi. I find it
relevant to quote here the words of Dilip Chitre, well known Marathi writer and intellectual, regarding
Bhajan singing in the time of the great Marathi Bhakti poet Tukaram. Chitre writes: “Bhajan was the
new form of singing poetry together and emphasizing its key elements by turning chosen lines into
refrains. These comprise a new kind of democratic literary transactions in which even illiterates are
drawn to the core of a literary text in a collective realization of some poet’s work.”(‘Says Tuka’,
Introduction, p. xix.)
There is some confusion about who was Krishna joo Razdan’s real Guru. According to some he was
the disciple of the well-known saint Mehtab Kak. But Pandit Shyamlal Razdan, his surviving
grandson, makes it clear that his actual Guru was Pandit Mukundram Shastri, a relatively unknown
saint, who resided in the Ali Kadal locality of Srinagar and lived for 49 years only from 1844-1993.
They further reveal that Krishna joo Razdan was initiated into the worship of Amriteshwara Shiva by
him. Amriteshwara was, therefore, his actual deity - a fact not known to many. It is said that
Mukundram had a vision of Amriteshwara at Lar en route one of his pilgrimages to the holy cave of
Amarnath. He told about it to one of his disciples, Vasudev Ghariyali, who was a painter. Ghariyali
painted a likeness of Amriteshwara as described to him by Mukundram, but it took him full seven
years to complete the painting. When at last Mukundram saw the painting he felt Amriteshwara
Himself coming out of the picture frame fully embodied in all His resplendence and at once went into
a trance. The picture is at present lying with the descendants of his adopted son who worship it on
every Shivaratri from midnight to five o’clock in the morning and then put it back into the closet.
Pandit Kailash Nath Fotedar managed to prepare a copy of this rare painting, which has now become
a family heirloom.
Amriteshwara Shiva is a deity contemplated on by the believers in Kashmir Shaivism, and the fact
that Krishna joo worshipped Him reveals his faith in the system. The image of Amriteshwara is to be
contemplated according to His dhyana mantra, which depicts Him as a three-eyed deity of pure white
complexion. Seated on a white lotus, He holds a pot of nectar in one of His upper hands and a lotus
in another; His other two hands are respectively in the boon-granting and protection-giving postures.
Obviously, the iconography is symbolical, though the worship is done strictly according to the
prescribed rituals.
Mukundram Tikkoo was not just a spiritual preceptor to Krishna joo Razdan, he guided him in many
other ways too. It was from him that Krishna joo imbibed the spirit of itinerancy. Hardly anyone
knows that it was Mukundram Tikkoo who as a sort of wandering ascetic first discovered the short route to the Amarnath cave via Baltal. Following him, Krishna joo Razdan not only made regular trips
to Srinagar to meet his disciples and friends, but wandered all over Kashmir visiting sacred sites,
pilgrimage places, shrines and holy springs and traversing what can be called “a sacred geography”
of the Valley, to borrow a phrase from A.K.Ramanujan. He may not have made it to Manzgam in his
childhood, but later he visited holy destinations in the entire Valley. These included Anatnag,
Amarnath, Lar, Devsar, Tulmul, Kapateshwara, Kaunsarnag, Kapalamochana Tirtha, Trisandhya, Kola
Sar, Verinag, Bhadrakali, Kotitirtha, Ramaradan, Harmukh, Brahmasar, the Jwalamukhi temple at
Khrew and a host of other places. In Srinagar, Hari Parbat and the Dal Lake were among his favourite
haunts, but the place he invariably visited was Tulmul. He would also go to Mattan, a famous place of
pilgrimage where Kashmiri Hindus go to perform shraddhas of their departed ones. It was here that
he met the poet-saint Paramanand, who was his senior contemporary. The meeting took place at the
holy spring of Mattan where Krishna joo is said to have asked for Paramanand’s blessings, which he
got in ample measure. No date has been recorded but at that time Krishna joo is said to have been
very young and had just begun to receive attention as a poet. No other details of the meeting are
known. We cannot say how far Paramanand influenced Krishna joo Razdan, but there is not much
evidence of such an influence in his works. Paramanand has his own style and idiom and Krishna joo
his own, though both of them draw from the same pan-Indian reservoir of Bhakti. Paramanand is
unmatched as a narrative poet and Krishna joo excels as a lyricist.
This is about all we know of Krishna joo Razdan’s life story. There are many gaps and very few details
– hardly the material for an authorised biography of one of the greatest Bhakti poets who enriched
Kashmiri cultural life with his soulful of songs. Unfortunately his works do not provide many
biographical cues. Scholars and researchers shall have to do to do a lot of hard work to explore
further the facts of his life instead of remaining contented with a handful of miraculous anecdotes.
This will be essential for understanding various dimensions of his personality both as a poet and a
saint. Ironically, in spite of the fact that not much is being done in this direction, Krishna joo
Razdan’s popularity as a religious poet has kept on soaring even though nearly 80 years have passed
since he gave up his mortal frame. In the recent years, the exiled and scattered community of
Kashmiri Pandits has discovered in his numerous Bhajans and Lilas a new source of spiritual succor
and solace that can sustain them in their present state of distress. Like Lal Ded he has become a
cultural icon for them and a medium of their connectivity with the past.
As a poet Krishna joo Razdan’s output is prolific, the range of his creative imagination amazing, his
imagery profuse, revealing his great love of nature. His Lilas or devotional lyrics alone run into hundreds, besides which he also composed psalms, litanies, hymns, prayers, poems describing nature
in its various aspects, allegorical poems, didactic poems, Raasa songs, marriage songs, philosophical
poems, dramatic monologues and also a long narrative poem titled ‘Shiva Lagna’ -- his magnum opus.
Apart from poems written in the lyrical mode, he has written long poems also like the one on the Dal
Lake mentioned above. In another long poem, which is actually in the form of a monologue, he has
depicted the world as a theatre of the absurd in which he asks for himself the role of a jester. There
is also a longish poem on Abhinavagupta. In yet another poem he blends his bhakti for the Divine
with deshabhakti or devotion for the country – and that is when the contours of the freedom
movement in the country were still not clear and Mahatama Gandhi had yet to make his mark on the
national scene.
Krishna joo Razdan’s poetry reflects his entire world-view, his vision of God and Man and the
relationship between them, his own spiritual anguish and his concern for the human condition, his
disturbing awareness of the vanity of worldly pleasures, his quest for beauty and truth and his stress
on higher human values. It also shows him fully conscious of the socio-economic and political
realities of his time much ahead of Mahjoor and Azad. His poetry in fact presents a whole world of
sensitivity and imagination, creativity and contemplation, symbol and allusion, thought and emotion,
belief and speculation, insight and intuition. At the centre of this fascinating world is Krishna joo
Razdan’s concept of Bhakti, his notion of the universe as God’s creative play. As we journey through
this amazingly vast and beautiful landscape of poetic creativity, we cover the entire gamut of
Kashmir’s spiritual culture. We also encounter a verbal artist of great sensitivity and unusual depth.
It is this experience that we have when we go through his magnum opus ‘Shiva Lagna’ or ‘Shiva
Parinay’. A long narrative poem, ‘Shiva Lagna’ has for its theme the mystic union of Shiva and
Shakti, the two fundamental aspects of the absolute, all-inclusive, Ultimate Reality, one
transcendental and the other immanent, which are basically one. The beatific vision of their
communion is projected through the all too familiar story of Sati’s self- immolation and her penance
as Parvati to obtain Shiva as her husband, which has been taken from the ‘Shiva Purana’. The
narrative structure of the work is rather weak and loose and altogether collapses towards the end
where the poet bursts into lyrical expression with full abandon. Krishna joo as we know is by nature
a lyricist and it is but natural that his lyricism should have gushed forth like the swift waters of a
mountain stream through the outer narrative crust of the work.
The Puranic story of Shiva and Parvati’s marriage, however, takes an interesting dimension in ‘Shiva
Lagna’ with Krishna joo allowing his innovative imagination to have a free play. In one such
innovative episode Shiva in his disguise as a mendicant tests the firmness of Parvati’s love for him
and finds it strong and unshakable. At another place we see Vishnu (Krishna) making the wedding
arrangements on behalf of Shiva. But the poet is at his innovative best in the episode of the ‘golden
snow’. Here he shows Mainavati, the shocked mother of Parvati who cannot stand the sight of an
ascetic bridegroom coming to wed her darling daughter, asking Shiva to bring some golden
ornaments to bedeck the bride. Shiva smiles and displays his aishwarya (divine majesty) by making
flakes of golden snow and pearls fall from the heavens. The snow falls heavily and incessantly and
accumulates in heaps in people’s courtyards, lawns, streets and alleys. Suddenly there is a mad rush
for the gold with people coming out with their shovels and baskets to gather as much as they can till
their store rooms and barns are full and there is no place left in their houses where they can store it.
In a moment everyone becomes richer than the richest in the world. But the golden snow continues
to fall and pile up, menacingly reaching up to the windows of the uppermost stories of their houses,
and they fear lest their roofs should cave in. The Earth begins to reel under the heavy mass and she
prays to Indra for having the impending disaster averted. It is only when Indra pleads on behalf of
all the supplicating people of the land that Shiva eventually relents and waving the clouds away he
piles the remaining snow in the shape of the Sumeru mountain. The wedding then takes place
amidst tremendous rejoicing and the poet cannot but invest the whole story with deeper allegorical
meanings. The description of Parvati’s nuptial union with Shiva becomes the communion between
the Supreme Being and His Cosmic Energy who manifests Herself as the phenomenal world, and this,
says the poet, is what the real meaning of Shivaratri is. It is the Absolute Consciousness that reveals
itself as the self-luminous reality pervading the whole universe, he explains, using the Shaiva
metaphors of prakasha and vimarsha.
But the great appeal that Krishna joo Razdan’s ‘Shiva Lagna’ has lies in the shades of a folk epic that
it has acquired. There is a profusion of folk colour in the work that finds its expression in its imagery
and metaphors, its description of the various events as well as the setting in which they take place.
The whole atmosphere bristles with elements of Kashmiri folk life. Although Shiva is shown as coming
from ‘Kashipur’ with his strange marriage procession, the setting is unmistakably Kashmiri. It is the
Kashmiri birds that warble, the Kashmiri flowers that bloom. Ladies in their colourful costumes sing
tuneful Kashmiri songs to the racy beats of the tumbaknaari to welcome the divine bridegroom,
addressing the bride as haa`r (the starling) and the bridegroom as poshinool (the golden oriole). The
poet seems to revel in describing each ceremony of the wedding in its minutest details, showing it taking place strictly according to Kashmiri Pandit rituals and customs. It culminates in the ‘poshi
puzaa’ or the floral worship of the bride and the bridegroom in the typical Kashmiri Pandit fashion,
with the ladies singing one of the best marriage songs composed by the poet himself that has
become extremely popular these days. It is a cosmic image showing Ishan’s (Shiva’s) balcony in the
sky bedecked with glittering stars for gems:
Mokhtu` kani taarakh chhiy taabadaanas
Az chhi Ishaanas poshi poozaa
The marriage is shown as a grand gala event, a star-studded extravaganza, in which both humans
and gods participate amidst great rejoicing – all the gods and goddesses of the local pantheon
eagerly playing their respective roles along with the trans-local ones. In the end all the gods, demigods
and humans sing the praises of Shiva and Keshava and both of them sing praises of each other.
In a surfeit of hymns and litanies, Krishna joo Razdan stresses that there is no duality between Shiva
and Krishna and equates both with nirguna brahma.
The non-duality between Shiva and Krishna is brought out in another interesting manner. Embedded
in his narrative of Shiva-Parvati marriage are sweet and mellifluous songs of Krishna’s love sport with
Radha and the cowherd maidens and His ecstatic Raasalila with them. In these songs, which are
among the best Raasa songs written in any language, Krishna joo Razdan displays a subtle aesthetic
sense reminiscent of poets like Jayadeva and Vidyapati. But stressing the spiritual rather than the
sensuous, he presents Raasa as a dance of spiritual ecstasy -- an eternal event that takes place in the
mind’s Vrindavana, transcending the limits of time and space:
man myon bindraaban tu` lo lo
aatma roop naarayan tu` lo lo!
[My own mind is Vrindavana
And Narayana my own soul!]
What is significant from the point of view we are trying to present is that these rapturous songs of
Raasa and Krishna and Radha’s divine love occur side by side of Krishna Razdan’s equally enchanting
and deeply devotional songs addressed to Shiva. It is evident that Krishna joo Razdan does not take
any sectarian or doctrinaire position in respect of Bhakti. This takes us to the concept of Bhakti
prevailing in his works to which we have referred earlier. Krishna joo places Bhakti above everything else in life as to him it is instrumental in grasping the Ultimate Reality. Bhakti for him is a bhava or a
feeling, a state of mind, an emotional rather than intellectual response to the problems of existence.
It is a prized possession as valuable as a string of pearls for it satisfies the human craving for a
supreme personality who can be adored and to whom prayer can be addressed. Someone unto
whom one can surrender and whom one can love and depend upon for deliverance from sin and the
miseries of life. He emphasizes the importance of complete surrender to God’s will as a pre-requisite
for Bhakti in his Raasa and other devotional songs and also points out to the raptures of union with
Him.
Krishna joo Razdan does not believe in intellectualizing devotion; his concept of Bhakti is centered in
emotion and feeling. He understands it as cultivation of an emotional relationship with God. But even
as he lays stress on bhava or feeling, he views jnana or knowledge in conjunction with it. He does
not find bhakti and jnana as irreconcilables, he thinks they go hand in hand. Steering clear of
controversial theorizations, he adopts an attitude that is based on the Bhagvad Gita, which says that
knowledge is essential for bhakti. It can be noted with interest that he has devoted one whole poem
to describe the traits of a jnani bhakta.
We find an intimate relationship between bhakti, jnana and mukti emerge in Krishna joo Razdan’s
thought. In this context we see him making frequent references to shaktipata, a key concept of
Kashmir Shaivism. According to Shaiva thinkers, shaktipata or divine grace is essential for obtaining
moksha, which Krishna joo considers as the highest goal and greatest attainment of life. He also calls
it anugraha and says that it is “the root of the tree of self-realization”. And to receive anugraha, he
joins the Vaishnava Acharyas in emphasizing that one has to dissolve ego and surrender before God
completely as that alone gives one the capacity to love Him. The Acharyas call love the ahladini
shakti or the “joy-giving power” of Krishna Himself, and say that it can be obtained only after
breaking the ego and merging the self with the Supreme Consciousness. In the Kashmir Shaiva view
also Shakti becomes Bhakti for the purpose of liberation. Unfortunately, the Shaiva concepts of
Bhakti and Shiva Bhakti itself have been ignored or marginalized by the Vaishnava Acharyas in their
theorization of Bhakti. This is not the case with Kashmir where Shiva Bhakti is no doubt the dominant
strain, but Vaishnava traditions have also flourished. According to the great Shaivite thinker
Abhinavgupta, it is the “attainment of definite knowledge” of the complete identity of ones soul with
the Absolute that is the highest form of Bhakti. Krishna joo Razdan too seems to uphold the view in
his ‘Shiva Lagna’ and other works that immediate experience of absolute non-dualism itself is the
highest devotion.
There is hardly any bibliography available of this last great poet of Kashmiri Bhakti tradition and this
speaks volumes about the state of scholarship in Kashmir. His poetry, in fact, has not been evaluated
or analyzed in a proper perspective so far. Those who claim to be literary critics in the language have
generally tended to ignore it or dismiss it as of peripheral importance, labeling it as religious poetry.
For the first time in my history of Kashmiri literature in Hindi I made an attempt to explore various
dimensions of his poetic genius and personality in some depth. I pointed to the high acoustic values
of his poetry whose beauty travels from our ears to our hearts touching their deepest cords and at
the same time takes us to the heights of mystic ecstasy. My idea was to challenge the general
perception that just because of the religious tag attached to them, works of Krishna Razdan and
other Kashmiri Bhakti poets should be dismissed as of practically little or no literary value and
relegated to the margins. They must be analyzed seriously for their poetic values and creative idiom,
I contended. As early as 1926, my late father and Kashmiri scholar Prof. S.K.Toshakhani had
published some of his select lyrics in a series of booklets under the title ‘Shrikrishna Vani’ and my
fascination with the saint-poet began when I happened to read these in my early childhood days. In
1991, well known Kashmiri poet and writer Arjandev Majboor wrote a monograph in Hindi for the
Sahitya Akademi, highlighting some of the salient features of Krishna joo Razdan’s poetic attainments
and throwing light on some aspects of his life. Earlier, Somnath Veer attempted to bring out a
critical edition of his complete works, claiming to have collated relevant manuscripts for the purpose.
The book was published by the Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages and
included a long introduction by him to the saint-poet’s life and works. According to Veer’s own
confession, there were some defects in the book which were later rectified in the second edition
(Krishna joo Razdan: 150th Birth Anniversary Souvenir, Ed. Dr. S.S. Toshkhani, J&K Vichar Manch,
New Delhi, pp. 34-35). Veer’s critical edition of Krishna joo Razdan’s complete works has none-theless
several merits and can be described as the first systematic attempt towards producing an
authentic version. His assessment of the poet’s creative genius, however, lacks depth and proper
perspective. Many years before Veer, as early as in 1913, Ali Mohammed & Sons, well known
booksellers of Srinagar, had published Krishna Razdan’s ‘Shiva Lagna’ in the Persian script under the
title ‘Harihar Kalyan’, Harihar Kaul being the name of Krishna joo’s nephew who had compiled it.
About the same time George Grierson got a version of the work, which included many of the poet’s
devotional lyrics and hymns, published by the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal under the title ‘Shiva
Parinay’ with a Sanskrit translation by Pandit Mukundram Shastri. The work was brought out serially
in six volumes from the year 1913 to 1924, three years after Mukundram Shastri’s death. Grierson,
however, does not say much about the work or the poet in his brief introduction. According to Somnath Veer, there is much textual variation in ‘Shiva Parinay’, besides which it does not include
Krishna joo Razdan’s all poems. Recently, the saint-poet’s grandson, Pandit Shyamlal Razdan
published his complete works in the Devanagari script in three volumes titled ‘Shiva Lagna’, ‘Krishna
Darshun’ and ‘Krishna Vani’, compiled obviously from a manuscript preserved as a family heirloom.
The first volume carries a brief introduction by the editor, but it hardly gives any new information.
We do not know the basis of the chronological ordering of the poems compiled in these three
volumes but it appears to be random, This is the case with Somnath Veer’s version also in which he
has arranged the poems under titles that do not seem to be particularly relevant.
Let me be clear and candid about it. Versions in the Persian script are likely to serve little purpose,
for a vast majority of those interested in reading Krishna joo Razdan today are not versant with it,
except of course a handful belonging to the older generation. The script is absolutely incapable of
rendering Sanskrit sounds, which abound in Bhakti terminology. His verses also continue to be
transmitted orally, though in a different manner. Recently there has been a spurt in the number of
people listening to the cassettes of his mellifluous songs, which has sent their sales soaring. But for
those intending to the study the poet seriously, the Devanagari script is definitely the best option.
This compilation in the newly standardized Devanagari-Kashmiri script by Dr. Rattan Lal Fotedar, son
of Pandit Kailash Nath Fotedar, and M.K.Raina is, therefore, to be particularly welcomed as it brings
complete Krishna joo Razdan to us. It will, I am sure, prove equally useful to the casual reader as
well as the serious student and researcher. It will help to introduce them to poetry incandescent with
the light of spiritual illumination and at the same time ecstatic with the joyful celebration of life,
poetry that brings out enchantingly the inner music of Kashmiri words using brilliant devices of
internal rhyme and assonance taken from an “oral poetics” and yet vibrating with deeper resonances
of meaning. Linguistically, this poetry has the flavour and natural sweetness of colloquial Kashmiri
speech for them to enjoy, laced here and there with Sanskrit and Persian words which are in common
use. The native beauty of the metre of the ‘vatsun’ lyric will thrill them with its peculiar folk appeal.
But more than anything else, this compilation of Krishna joo Razdan’s poems will take them in one
sweep across a vast canvas of cultural imprints which can be traced to centuries of tradition and
civilizational memory.
Dr. R. L. Fotedar and M.K. Raina, the two editors of the collection, are acutely aware of the
significance of the culture-specific aspects of Krishna joo Razdan’s poetry. M.K. Raina is dynamically
involved in activities concerning preservation and projection of Kashmir’s literary and cultural
heritage. He has painstakingly produced the text in standardized Devanagari-Kashmiri script, and what is more published a collection of his six beautiful short stories on Kashmiri social life in the script
displaying much promise. The two have been working in tandem to edit and publish this version of
Razdan’s poems, which can very well be treated as an authorized version, compiled as it is from a
copy of the manuscript prepared by Krishna joo Razdan’s chief disciple Pandit Kanth joo Sharabi. The
copy was made by Pandit Kailash Nath Fotedar, himself a close disciple of Pandit Kanth joo Sharabi,
for his personal use. It must be remembered that all the four main disciples of the saint-poet had
prepared their own respective manuscripts of the master’s poetic utterances, with Kanth joo penning
them down immediately after he would hear them coming from his mouth.
I very much hope that by bringing out this edition the editors will make Krishna joo Razdan accessible
to the entire Kashmiri diaspora which has now spread to every part of the globe. His voice is a
unique voice of Kashmiri Bhakti tradition, passionately spiritual and yet intensely human. It could also
inspire someone to translate some his select verses for non-Kashmiri readers who are hardly familiar
with his name. It is indeed sad that no attempt to translate them has been made so far.
New Delhi,
Dr. Shashi Shekhar Toshkhani
July19, 2004
[Dr. S.S. Toshkhani, the editor, is a renowned scholar of India and belongs to a great
intellectual family of Kashmir. His father late Prof. S.K. Toshkhani was a
legendary scholar of Kashmir's literature, language and culture. Dr.
Toshkhani is a poet, linguist, writer and thinker. He has contributed
substantially to Kashmiri heritage and carried out modern research in
various fields of Kashmiri literature, history, religion, art and social
science in general. He is a member of the research committee of
Kashmiri Education, Culture and Science Society. He is conducting
research on Bhakti tradition in Kashmiri Poetry as a Senior Fellow (on a
fellowship from the Ministry of Culture) and on rituals and visual arts of
Kashmir at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. He has been
associated in many leading seminars conducted by Kashmir Education, Culture and
Science Society. Dr. Toshkhani, therefore, represents a great tradition of scholarship of
Kashmir and Kashmiri Pandits.]
POSTED BY: VIPUL KOUL
EDITED BY ; ASHOK KOUL
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