{"id":1217,"date":"2008-06-01T03:57:01","date_gmt":"2008-05-31T22:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/?p=1217"},"modified":"2020-03-25T19:14:03","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T13:44:03","slug":"of-sufism-and-kathak-dancers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/?p=1217","title":{"rendered":"Of Sufism And Kathak Dancers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Music has the power to transcend borders, faith and even time itself. One of the greatest regrets of my life is that I never could attend a live concert by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan<\/strong>. Recently a much-hyped concert was held in Kashmir by a pakistani rock band – Junoon<\/strong>. I did not attend the concert for two reasons. First of all, Junoon without Ali Azmat is like Coke without the fizz – absolutely flat. Two, the idea of attending a music concert surrounded by barbed wire and jackboots is somehow disconcerting. No pun intended. <\/p>\n

However, that is not what this post is about. It is about the fact that the ‘hire-for-your-cause’ Junoon like to call themeselves a ‘Sufi Rock<\/strong>‘ band. Marketing whiz-kids have adopted ‘Sufi<\/strong>‘ as GenX catch-phrase and this disturbing trend has been picked up and amplified by the media who are now billing every wannabe as a ‘Sufi This<\/em>‘ or ‘Sufi That<\/em>‘.<\/p>\n

Someone like Kailash Kher<\/strong>, a self-professed follower of a form of yoga called ‘Nirguna Upasana<\/em>‘, is commercially savvy enough to title his album “Sufism Simplified<\/strong>“, all the while maintaining that he is not a sufi singer<\/a> – probably to keep the saffron brigade off his back. This crass commercialisation has been taken to its extreme by a dancer who apparently performs and teaches something called ‘sufi kathak<\/strong>‘ commercially, while making statements like “Sufi Kathak is not a mechanical dance form that anyone could learn, one has to learn the nuances of Sufi thought to be able to carry it through panache<\/em>“. If only it were that easy. All this from a website<\/a> offering VCDs for sale and press kits for download.<\/p>\n

Sufism<\/strong> is the mystical or inward dimension of Islam<\/strong>. Just as there can be no Yoga<\/strong> without Hinduism<\/strong>, no Zen<\/strong> without Buddhism<\/strong> – there is no Sufism without Islam. The term Sufi itself means a muslim mystic. At its very basic level Sufism denotes an absolute detachment from wordly desire in search of the ultimate truth. Unfortunately the mass marketing juggernaut is distorting\/transmogrifying ‘Sufi<\/strong>‘ into a catchphrase for quick and easy money.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Music has the power to transcend borders, faith and even time itself. One of the greatest regrets of my life is that I never could attend a live concert by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Recently a much-hyped concert was held in Kashmir by a pakistani rock band – Junoon. I did not attend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kashmir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1217"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1325,"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions\/1325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}