Myth is not prehistory; it is timeless reality, which repeats itself in history. (Ernst Jünger, 1951)
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aśvatthaṁ prāhuravyayam
This photograph of Bibi Bimal Kaur Khalsa is one I'm very fond of.
Canopied by tangles of holy pipal leaves and twisted sturdy boughs, she towers over her surroundings, her person the focus of the photo— as if she were the very trunk that supports this mighty tree: the axis mundi, the world-tree, Yggdrasill, the tree of life. In the Bhagavad Gita, अश्वत्थं प्राहुरव्ययम्—they speak of the imperishable aśvattha tree. The cosmic tree, for Eliade (1957), represents ‘everything that religious man regards as pre-eminently real and sacred,’ the ‘sign of the imminent resurrection’ that heroic youth seek out.
Against the photograph’s pale, grainy, sun-washed textures, Bimal Kaur’s dramatic presence also evokes the mighty yellow Sun, the unchanging Bindu, the immutable center of Being around which the cosmos Becomes— the bestower of light, of plenitude, of life, of sacred white heat.
The tree of life is said to be ‘like the color of the sun’ in the 3rd century text On the Origin of the World, rising up to heaven. Basanti, the splendorous color of spring, is also one of the colors of the Nishan Sahib that flies high above every gurughar.
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Stretching the web of associations further, the manipura (‘city of jewels’) is the locus of the sun, the yellow-hued seat of the kundalini, latent, unmanifested Shakti symbolized by a coiled snake (“ਕੁੰਡਲੀਆ ਸੱਪ ਵੀਰ ਖਾਲਸਾ ਅਜੇ ਨਹੀਂ ਮਰਿਆ—The kundalia ‘coiled’ snake, the valiant Khalsa, has not yet perished”).
Located behind the navel, the resplendent manipura is also coterminous with the umbilical cord— the tree of life that nurtures and brings life into this mortal coil. The two sets of free-flowing associations— fecundity and solarity, earth and heaven— thus find themselves ordered into a harmonious unity.
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The details in the photograph gain an arresting poignancy when placed in its historical context: during the inclement first act of the Troubles that rocked the blessed land of Punjab, engulfed in a war that churned and roiled into an ever-darker, ever-barbaric vortex of tragedy. Barely has a generation gone by that hasn’t nourished the soil of Punjab with blood— be it the enemy’s or their own.
It is little wonder, then, that children gather around her as she speaks. She evokes the archetypal Mother of the Khalsa— in this moment, homologized with Bhagautī in the form of Mata Sahib Devan, whose yearning for motherhood was fulfilled by Guru Gobind Singh in the form of the Khalsa: ਗੋਦੀ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਦੇਵੀ ਮਾਤਾ ਦੀ ਪਾਏ— [The Khalsa] has been placed in the lap of Sri Sahib Devi Mata.
As the towering cosmic tree in the photograph’s topography of myth and symbolism, the Sun casting warm light on Punjab’s children of war, Bibi Bimal Kaur bears “testimony… that spring [basant] will soon come.” (Eliade)
In this moment, captured in eternity, Bibi Bimal Kaur exists simultaneously in historical and mythical time, as history and myth, as mortal and eternal— in itihasa-as-myth.
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‘umm al-ḥarb
In June 1986, on the 2nd anniversary of Operation Blue Star— amidst escalating Panthic agitation and state repression— Bibi Bimal Kaur led a defiant charge of Sikhs, armed with swords, sticks and iron rods, into the Darbar Sahib complex.
A sea of saffron and blue turbans and dupattas, kirpans tucked into kesari kamarkasas fastened at the hip, swords and sticks held aloft— a timeless vision of Singhs and Singhnian, expressions grim, clear-eyed, making their way through the complex. It is the architecture that betrays the historical juncture of this march, revealing the still-conspicuous scars it weathered during 1984’s Battle of Amritsar.
This image epitomizes the dogged, defiant resilience, the spirit of chardi kala that the Sikhs have displayed in the face of tragedy and genocides throughout history, refusing to succumb to critical injuries, rising time and again against abysmal odds. For the Guru always stands with them, and the legion of warriors, saints, and martyrs that color the pages of Sikh itihasa provide the paradigmatic model that guides the Panth forward.
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The actions of the gods, “their sacred gesta constitute mysteries” (Eliade). Since God entered into history with the irruption of the Guru-avatara (Hans, 1988), history itself is mythicized: myth crashes into historical time, staining it, sacralizing it. Every reenactment of the sacred gesta simultaneously belongs to the order of history as well as myth— within the Sikh cosmos, history itself brims with sacrality.
Every figure who performs these gesta (thus revealing the mysteries) is invariably immortalized in the conceptual framework of itihasa-as-myth. Where Eliot bemoaned modernity’s failure to reintegrate itself with the fertile order of myth, the Khalsa endlessly replenishes sacred time (as pleases the Guru) via this principle of mytho-historical simultaneity, in effect living in satiyuga continuously.
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And so this photograph, too, rises to the stature of myth, forming the modern-day fulcrum upon which history and myth are again brought together in metaphysical correspondence: Bibi Bimal Kaur leading the mob of Sikhs is Mai Bhago rallying the 40 Mukte (liberated ones) is Durga leading the magical tigers that sprung from Dushta Daman’s tiger skin— war-mothers draped in basanti, all homologized with Bhagauti in the form of śastar (weapons).
The archetypal Devi here divests herself of all maternal instinct, and emerges as the warlike Ugradanti, the fierce-toothed one; she becomes أُمّ الحرب—‘umm al-ḥarb, the Mother of Warre itself. The kundalini snake awakens as Durga, piercing electric through the sun-door and unleashing total warre.
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Bibi Bimal Kaur, Mai Bhago, Mata Sahib Devan, Durga. The cosmic Devi herself, as infinite creative-destructive potential, as potencies and potentialities and Becomings, as divine technics, as Shakti— she is ultimately beholden to, part of, subsumed within the absolute Bindu, the immutable Center, the highest Reality, indivisible, pure Being— the Eternal Lord. ਚਰਨ ਸਰਨਿ ਜਿਹ ਬਸਤ ਭਵਾਨੀ ॥— Bhavani resides in the sanctuary of His feet.
The duality exists only “in order that there may be ‘room’ for a procedure from potentiality to act” (Coomaraswamy, 1942), the Devi being Mahakala’s creative agency, the potential that enables His divine play or lila.
All sacred gesta, all myth, all history transpires within this worldly spectacle, this Bindu of ਏਕ (unity) and ਅਨੇਕ (multiplicity, diversity). ਖੇਲ ਖੇਲਿ ਅਖੇਲ ਖੇਲਨ ਅੰਤ ਕੋ ਫਿਰਿ ਏਕ॥— After playing all sorts of worldly spectacles/sports, He frees himself and in the end returns to being One.
As Sant Singh Maskeen said, only two people can truly play games: one is the child, the other is God.
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Mai Bhago, who attained the brahmgiani’s paramahamsa avastha, ਪਾਯੋ ਪਰਮ ਰੂਪ ਅਬਿਨਾਸੀ ।—obtained the supreme immortal form. In this exalted position, she donned the Khalsa’s kshatriya saroop. Having been initiated into the mysteries in the lotus-like presence of Patishahi 10, Mai Bhago transcended her worldly condition— from here on, her actions emulate the sacred gesta of the gods.
Bimla Devi was initiated into the Khalsa Panth in October 1984, baptized by the sacred sword— symbolically, by Bhagauti herself. Reborn as Bibi Bimal Kaur Khalsa, she turned into a fierce agitator and political figurehead in the years of lead that consumed Punjab— participating in demonstrations and elections, courting arrest, giving speeches and interviews, refusing to be sidelined as ‘the assassin’s widow.’
And, in leading the armed charge in the Darbar Sahib complex in 1986, she too imitated the sacred raudra gesta of Mai Bhago, and via the same mystical principle, Durga.
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Taken together, these two photographs of Bibi Bimal Kaur become poetic visual homologies of the dual aspects (maternal-martial) of the Devi illustrated in Ugradaṅtī: ਤੁਹੀ ਦੁਸਟ ਦਾਹਿਨ ਤੁਹੀ ਸਰਬ ਪਾਲੀ ॥— You are the one who destroys the evil and the wicked; you are the one who takes motherly care of all. The Tree of Life, the Sun, Mata Sahib Devan, Mai Bhago, Durga, kundalini, Shakti, the sword, basant— archetypes, myth and gesta, eternally returning in the Bimal Kaur that exists in these pictures.
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