Divine verses
Khwaja Mir Dard is one of Delhi’s lesser-known Sufis. His dargah is hidden inside the Khwaja Mir Dard basti near Zakir Hussain College. A leading mystic figure of the 18th century, Khwaja gave himself the pen-name “Dard”, meaning pain in Urdu. He composed the soliloquy:
“You have been called Dard not because you should become pained by the pain of things beside God, but because you should be completely exempt from corporeal pain and get the pain of the heart which is the means of salvation in both worlds…”
Despite being initiated in the conservative Naqshbandi Sufi order, Khwaja Mir Dard had a deep passion for music and poetry. He regularly arranged musical assemblies in his house. The emperor, Shah Alam II, who wrote under the pen name Aftab, often attended these spiritual gatherings. Khwaja’s love for music came under attack by the orthodox clergy and Sufis. He authored the book Hurmat-e-Ghina explaining, “My music is from God. I am imprisoned in this affliction according to Divine Will — what can I do?”
Khwaja further wrote: “Agnostic without a book is like a man without children” and expressed that he had been granted, “like the candle, the tongue of clear speech”. The mystic said that he did not write poetry on commission and his verses were divinely inspired. Khwaja was the son of the mystic poet Khwaja Muhammad Nasir Andalib, who gave up military service to follow the Sufi path. Khwaja Mir Dard was a disciple of his father, whom he believed to be the perfect guide.
Khwaja Mir Dard instructed a number of Urdu poets. In his greatest work Ilm ul Kitab (Book of Knowledge), Khwaja details his mystic ideologies and experiences.
Some years later, he wrote Chahar Risala, four beautiful spiritual diaries where he elaborates on the theories of the Divine as reflected in the different levels of creation. “Although Adam has not got wings, yet he has reached a place that was not destined for angels.” Although Khwaja Mir Dard’s poetry is in Persian, he is mostly remembered for his Urdu Diwan containing 12,000 couplets, which are about Divine Unity. He writes, “In the state of collectedness the single beings of the world are one, all the petals of the rose together are one… Pain and happiness have the same shape in the world, you may call the rose an open heart, or a broken heart.”
Khwaja Mir Dard’s poetry has lasted longer than most poetic works of the 18th century Delhi. His poetry articulates Khwaja’s mystic philosophy:
“In the state of collectedness the single beings of the world are one
All the petals of the rose together are one”
Sadia Dehlvi is a Delhi-based writer and author of Sufism: The Heart of Islam
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