difficult are the meanigns of words

Shah Hussain’s verses are incorporated in “Difficult are the meanings of word”, is a video collage of live performance held at the Sufi’s shrine, together with clips of queer performativity. The colonisation of South Asia by the British criminialised homosexuality under section 377. Interestingly enough, the prior Sufi traditions in poetry from the region very often portrayed the lover in the female gender, and the beloved in the male gender. Hence a queer reading of the work is of utmost importance, for generating a sense of historicity for the queer struggle in Pakistan.

I have been critically researching the poetic works Shah Hussain since five years and a queer reading of the said work. The ongoing project further focuses on charting a collective history of Queer Muslims in South Asia, with a particular emphasis on Pakistani.

Shah Hussain, also known as Madhu Lal Hussain, was born in 1539 A.D. in the Walled City of Lahore, and is considered as one of the most accomplished Sufi poets to work in the Punjabi language. Shah Hussain is further celebrated as a pioneer in the use of the classical genre of ‘kafi’, a stanza having four lines in each poem. The Sufi’s poetry sheds light on the hurdles of his impassioned heart and love for Madhu, a Brahmin boy. It should be noted that the Sufi’s intense love drew harsh criticism from his contemporary intellectuals and historians. The poetry carries messages of love and acceptance for those living in the peripheries of society, such as the Hindus, Sikhs and Dalits, also illustrated by his fervent love for Madhu Lal. Oral traditions also speak of the miraculous powers at Shah Hussain’s disposal. As one such story goes, he was once found sleeping in the same bed as Madhu, whereupon his relatives came to murder the pair, but could not for they had turned blind through some metaphysical intervention. And such was the love that the two shared, that their identities have been fused for all eternity into a single name, Madhu Lal Hussain. Shah Hussain’s stature may further be gauged from the millions of people who visit his tomb annually on his Urs ( Urs is the death anniversary of a Sufi saint, usually held at the saint’s dargah / shrine or tomb).

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