Khwaja Ghulam Farid is among my favourite Sufi poets of the subcontinent. He was born in 1845 CE to a family of Arab settlers from Mithankot in Punjab. His mother died when he was four years old. At the age of 13, he became a disciple of his elder brother, Khwaja Fakhruddin.
Known for pluralistic religious symbols to express his religious devotion and belief in the oneness of God, in a series of kaafis that allude to praising of Prophet Muhammad, he writes, “May I call you a mosque, temple and church? May I call you the Veda and the Quran? May I call you a rosary? May I call you a cross thread? May I describe you as infidelity? May I describe you as faith? May I call you Dashrat, Lakshman and Ram? May I call you my beloved Sita? May I call you Baldev, Jaswada and Nund? May I call you Krishan, Kanhaiya and Kanha? May I call you Gita, Granth and Veda, O essential beauty! The primordial light! May I call you the witness in the city of Hejaz? May I describe you as the reason for the creation of this cosmos?”
