Bulla Sahib: The Wrong Bulla

Bulla Sahib's guru was Jagjivan Sahib, and Jagjivan Sahib founded a Satnami panth, and the word Satnami has been attached to at least four different and unconnected movements.

Which produces a second confusion, and it is worth sorting because the groups are genuinely different and one of them is very large.

One. The Sadhs, or the Satnamis of Birbhan.

Founded in the mid seventeenth century in the Narnaul country, in what is now southern Haryana, by Birbhan.

A strict nirguna group: the true name, no images, no ritual, no caste, no intoxicants, a code of conduct, and a plain refusal to bow to anybody except the true name.

Two. The Narnaul rising of 1672.

A Satnami community in the Narnaul and Mewat region rose against Mughal authority, in an episode that began as a dispute with a revenue official and escalated into open revolt, and it was suppressed by force by Aurangzeb.

It is a documented event in the Mughal chronicles and it is the only occasion on which a nirguna sant community in north India fought a field battle against an empire.

Three. Jagjivan Sahib's Satnamis of Awadh.

Which is Bulla Sahib's line.

Jagjivan Sahib, of Kotwa in the Barabanki country, roughly the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, founded a panth centred on the satnam, the true name, in the standard nirguna register.

This is a separate movement from the Narnaul groups, in a different region, with a different founder and no organisational connection, sharing only the word.

Four. Guru Ghasidas and the Satnamis of Chhattisgarh.

And this one is the largest by a very long way and is the least likely to be what somebody means when they say Satnami in a Sant Mat context, and the most likely to be what a person in central India means.

Guru Ghasidas, born in the late eighteenth century at Girodpuri in Chhattisgarh, founded the Satnampanth in the early nineteenth century among the Chamar community, and it is one of the most consequential Dalit religious movements in Indian history.

Its content: one true name, no images, no idols, no caste, no meat, no alcohol, no tobacco, no ploughing with cows, and a refusal of the entire ritual apparatus that had been used to keep the community at the bottom.

And it worked as a social movement. The Satnamis of Chhattisgarh are a very large community, the jaitkhamb, the white pillar, is their marker, Girodpuri is the centre, and the annual gathering there is enormous.

So when you see the word

Ask which one.

Sant Mat literature usually means Jagjivan Sahib's Awadh panth. A history of the Mughal empire usually means Narnaul. A person in Chhattisgarh almost always means Guru Ghasidas.

And they are not the same movement, and conflating them, which happens constantly, erases a major Dalit religious history into a footnote in somebody else's lineage chart.

And here is the honest problem with writing about Bulla Sahib at all.

He exists, in most of the literature, as a position in somebody else's chart.

Jagjivan Sahib to Bulla Sahib to Govind Sahib to Paltu Sahib. Or, in the Radhasoami versions, a longer chain running down to Tulsi Sahib and then to Shiv Dayal Singh at Agra in 1861.

He is the third name in a list, and a very large proportion of what is written about him was written by people whose interest in him was that he connected two other people.

What that does to a figure

Three things, and they are worth naming because the pattern is common.

One. The biography thins to whatever the chain requires.

What survives about a link is the initiation, the succession, and the dates that make the chain work. The life goes. Nobody records what he did for a living, what he was like, what happened to him, or what he thought about anything that was not the transmission.

Two. The verses stop being read.

A person who is a link is quoted for one or two verses that establish the doctrine and support the lineage claim, and the rest of the Bani sits unread in printed volumes, and every subsequent writer quotes the same two verses from the previous writer.

Three. And the chain itself is the thing under dispute.

The Charandas entry sets this out at length. Sant Mat lineage charts are constructed backwards by organisations needing continuity, differ between branches, and each version happens to authorise the branch that drew it.

Which means the one thing Bulla Sahib is famous for is also the one thing about him that is contested.

What is actually available

The Bulla Sahib ki Bani, in Hindi, in printed editions.

Sabads, dohas and ramainis, in the standard nirguna register: the true name, the guru, the inner sound, the attack on ritual and caste, the transience of the body, the market and the loom.

And a reader who wants him rather than his position in a chart should go there and read the verses that nobody quotes, which is the only correction available.

The general point, which is the reason this entry exists

A great many people in the devotional record survive only as connections.

This series has recorded the same thing in a different form several times. Daya Bai survives as the second of two women. Panbai survives as the person being sung to. The woman on the wall survives as a model.

And Bulla Sahib survives as a link.

Which is not quite erasure, because the name and the book are both still here. It is a specific kind of flattening: the person is preserved exactly to the extent that somebody else's story needs them, and no further.

And the response is the same in every case.

Read what they wrote.

Where to go

• Bhurkura, near Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, where Bulla Sahib's seat is
• Kotwa, Barabanki district, for Jagjivan Sahib
• Ayodhya, for Paltu Sahib, two links down
• Girodpuri, Chhattisgarh, for Guru Ghasidas, who is a completely different Satnami tradition and is worth going to on his own account
• Kasur, Pakistan, for Bulleh Shah, if you can get there, which requires a visa and planning

A daily practice from this entry

• Satnam, the true name, which is the word all four of the movements in the second section share
• And the reading habit this entry argues for: when you meet somebody who is described as a link, go and find one thing they wrote that nobody quotes

Two men called Bulla. Bulla Sahib of Bhurkura, roughly the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, of Bhurkura near Ghazipur in eastern Uttar Pradesh, was a Hindu nirguna sant whose guru was Jagjivan Sahib of Kotwa in Awadh and whose disciple was Govind Sahib, whose disciple was Paltu Sahib of Ayodhya. He wrote sabads, dohas and ramainis in Hindi, collected as the Bulla Sahib ki Bani, and his seat is at Bhurkura. Bulleh Shah of Kasur, roughly 1680 to 1757, was a Punjabi Muslim Sufi of the Qadiri order whose murshid was Shah Inayat Qadiri of Lahore, who wrote kafis in Punjabi and is one of the greatest poets that language has produced, and who is buried at Kasur in what is now Pakistan. These are two different people, and they are conflated constantly in online material, devotional compilations and lineage literature that quotes Bulleh Shah's Punjabi verses as though they belonged to the sant of Bhurkura.

Why the confusion happens: partly the name, and partly something more interesting, which is that their vocabularies overlap almost completely. Both attack the priest and the mullah, both attack ritual purity, both attack pilgrimage as a substitute for change, both put the teacher at the centre, both say the thing you are looking for is inside and you have been searching the wrong premises, and both use the same images of the loom, the market, the mirror, the lamp, the wedding and the boat. That is not borrowing but the shared north Indian devotional register of the period, which the sant and Sufi traditions built together in the same towns, in the same languages, arguing with the same establishments. Bulleh Shah's own biography carries it: he was a Syed, of the highest Muslim status, and took a murshid who was an Arain, a cultivating community, and his family objected on exactly the grounds a Hindu family would have. Practically: a Hindi sabad in Devanagari from the Bhurkura tradition is Bulla Sahib, and a Punjabi kafi about not knowing who you are is Bulleh Shah, and both are worth your time.

Which Satnamis: the word has been attached to at least four different and unconnected movements. The Sadhs or Satnamis of Birbhan, founded in the mid seventeenth century in the Narnaul country in what is now southern Haryana, a strict nirguna group holding the true name with no images, ritual, caste or intoxicants. The Narnaul rising of 1672, when a Satnami community in the Narnaul and Mewat region rose against Mughal authority in an episode that began as a dispute with a revenue official and escalated into open revolt, suppressed by force under Aurangzeb, which is documented in the Mughal chronicles and is the only occasion on which a nirguna sant community in north India fought a field battle against an empire. Jagjivan Sahib's Satnamis of Awadh, centred at Kotwa in the Barabanki country, which is Bulla Sahib's line and is a separate movement from the Narnaul groups with a different founder and no organisational connection. And Guru Ghasidas and the Satnamis of Chhattisgarh, born in the late eighteenth century at Girodpuri, who founded the Satnampanth in the early nineteenth century among the Chamar community, which is one of the most consequential Dalit religious movements in Indian history, holding one true name, no images, no caste, no meat, alcohol or tobacco, and a refusal of the entire ritual apparatus that had kept the community at the bottom, with the jaitkhamb or white pillar as its marker and an enormous annual gathering at Girodpuri. So when you see the word, ask which one: Sant Mat literature usually means Jagjivan Sahib's Awadh panth, a history of the Mughal empire usually means Narnaul, and a person in Chhattisgarh almost always means Guru Ghasidas. Conflating them erases a major Dalit religious history into a footnote in somebody else's lineage chart.

Being a link: Bulla Sahib exists in most of the literature as a position in somebody else's chart, the third name in a list, with a very large proportion of what is written about him written by people whose interest was that he connected two other people. That does three things. The biography thins to whatever the chain requires, so what survives is the initiation, the succession and the dates that make the chain work, while nobody records what he did for a living, what he was like or what he thought about anything that was not the transmission. The verses stop being read, since a link is quoted for the one or two verses that establish the doctrine and support the lineage claim while the rest of the Bani sits unread, with every subsequent writer quoting the same two verses from the previous one. And the chain itself is the thing under dispute, since Sant Mat lineage charts are constructed backwards by organisations needing continuity and differ between branches, which means the one thing he is famous for is also the one thing about him that is contested.

The general point: a great many people in the devotional record survive only as connections, and this series has recorded the same flattening with Daya Bai, who survives as the second of two women, with Panbai, who survives as the person being sung to, and with the unnamed woman who survives as a model for an image. It is not quite erasure, since the name and the book are both still here, but it is a specific kind of flattening in which the person is preserved exactly to the extent somebody else's story needs them and no further. The response is the same every time: read what they wrote, and go and find one thing nobody quotes.