Love, Fana, and Heer Ranjha

Whenever I come across a mention of Heer Ranjha, I think of Jhang where my grandparents lived and where many summer holidays were spent as a child. It happens to be the town where the tomb of Heer is located and also where Pakistan’s only Nobel winner - Dr. Abdus Salam - came from. I remember seeing the tomb of Heer from a distance though I never did visit it. Recently, I came across a wonderful article about the legend and it’s associations with Punjabi poetry and various Sufi concepts. In it Nizam-un-Nisa Ayeda Naqvi writes:

“Ranjha, Ranjha kaindi ni, main aap hi Ranjha hoi, says Heer (“I spoke Ranjha’s name so much, I became him.”). This is a line that recurs again and again in contemporary Punjabi music and poetry, not just because it shows the devotion of Heer, who can see no one but Ranjha when she is separated from him, but because it explains the age-old concept of fana—the annihilation of the self and the subsequent absorption in the object of one’s devotion.

This is the very idea that Zikr, or Sufi chanting, is based on. In Zikr, the attributes of the Divine are invoked in the hope that they will rub off on those chanting. So by repeating Ya Rahman, Ya Raheem, one is aspiring to develop the qualities of compassion and forgiveness just as, through the invocation of other Divine names, different qualities are being fostered.

Thus when Heer starts seeing herself as Ranjha, erasing all distinctions between the lover and the beloved, she has accomplished what Sufis spend their whole lives trying to do: she has emptied her self and become a reflection of her object of devotion.”

I love how Sufism is not afraid of integrating physical love (Ishq-i-Mijazi) with love for the divine (Ishq-i-Haqiqi) and hence makes spirituality accessible to all. What could me more attractive than such a teaching?