The melancholic mystic: Remembering baul Ukil Munshi

To understand the soul of this delta, one must listen to the wind and the water. In Bangladesh, the philosophy of the Baul goes beyond a mere folk music genre; it is the very breath of our cultural inheritance. 

Born from the profound intersections of Sufi mysticism and indigenous asceticism, Baul philosophy imagines a world stripped of ego, jealousy, and social divides. Through earthy metaphors, these mystics captured the infinite within the fragile, temporal boundaries of the human body. 

Apart from Lalon Shai's Kushtia, this spiritual awakening blossomed in the submerged, watery expanse of the 'Bhati' region, the eastern wetlands of Bengal. 

The Bhati region is a landscape of extremes. For half the year, it is swallowed by floodwaters, becoming an endless, shoreless mirror for the sky. 

And, from this water-drenched earth emerged a distinct lineage of mystic bards. Among them stands a profoundly solitary figure: Ukil Munshi.

Born on 11 June 1885, in the village of Nurpur Boali in the haor-bound district of Netrokona, his given name was Abdul Hoque Akand. His parents affectionately called him 'Ukil' (lawyer), dreaming that their firstborn would one day pursue the law. Destiny, however, had a different script. 

As he grew older, he began leading prayers at the local mosque, earning the traditional title 'Munshi'. Thus, the boy Abdul Haque became known to the world as Ukil Munshi.

Ukil Munshi's creations are the purest distillation of the agonising, beautiful ache of separation. His spiritual longing for the Creator was articulated through the piercing earthly lament of a woman separated from her lover. 

The rivers, the eroding banks, the decay of beauty, and the relentless emptiness of the open sky became the canvas for his music. He became widely revered as the 'Birohi Baul', the melancholic mystic whose tunes possessed the vulnerability of a weeping heart, striking listeners with the precision of an arrow.

It is this profound sense of longing that a unique gathering in Dhaka tried to invoke today (June 12). Titled "Biccheder Bazar: The Tradition of Longing and a Re-reading of Contemporary Isolation," the event honors Ukil Munshi's birth anniversary. Having taken place on 11 and  12  June at the KUN Creative Studio in the Amin Tannery area of Hazaribagh, the program is a collective endeavor to rethink folk wisdom against the backdrop of modern alienation. 

The space is hosting research exhibitions, deep-dive discussions, and a documentary on the mystic directed by filmmaker and researcher Anarya Murshid.

Perhaps the most compelling feature of this tribute is a visual resurrection. During his lifetime, Ukil Munshi never had a portrait drawn or a photograph taken. For the first time, organisers have exhibited a physical face for the mystic. 

Leading the intellectual discourse on our cultural inheritance and the questions of contemporary isolation are prominent thinkers, including constitution expert and Rashtra Sangskar Andolon president Advocate Hasnat Quaiyum, lyricist Shahidullah Faraizi, playwright and researcher Dr Saymon Zakaria, writer Muhammad Akbar, and Anarya Murshid himself. Naturally, the air will grow heavy with melodies as Kulkul Ahmed, Ukil Munshi's own grandson, Baul Abdul Momen Khan, Anwar Dewan, Jesmin Sarkar, Nuruzzaman Chisti, and others to breathe life into the maestro's timeless tunes.

Perhaps the most compelling feature of this tribute is a visual resurrection. During his lifetime, Ukil Munshi never had a portrait drawn or a photograph taken. For the first time, organisers have exhibited a physical face for the mystic. Mohammad Jahidul Hoque, assistant professor of Jagannath University, one of the key organisers, explained the meticulous creation process, "Since forensic skull analysis or DNA testing was out of our reach, we turned to a research method known as multisource reconstruction."

The team engaged intimately with the people of Netrokona, gathering oral descriptions from his closest surviving relatives and local elders. They studied the facial features of his direct descendants and even factored in the historical dietary habits of the region to understand the physical structure of its people at the time. 

Guided and rigorously cross-checked by his grandson Kulkul Ahmed, studio artists and fine arts sculptors went through numerous methodological drafts to complete the work. "We do not claim this is an exact, hundred-percent replica of Ukil Munshi," Jahid noted, "but the final portrait has received profound validation from multiple sources in his native area and Kulkul Ahmend. We have made sure to transparently state this process in our exhibition."

Even within the mysticism Ukil Munshi was deeply rooted in mainstream Islamic practices. He taught Arabic to children, called the faithful to prayer, and led the congregation as an Imam. He conducted funeral rites. 

So profound was his spiritual purity that people would leave behind dying wishes requesting that only Ukil Munshi lead their Janaza. By day, he was the devoted, rule-bound cleric; by night, he sang until dawn, his resonant voice pulling listeners into a trance of divine heartbreak.

Behind the cleric and the mystic was a man intimately acquainted with earthly sorrow. He was an orphaned boy robbed of parental affection, a youth denied love, a man who lost his ancestral lands to the river, a grieving father mourning the sudden death of a child, and finally, a husband wandering in the permanent void left by his beloved wife. 

Ukil Munshi lived as an ascetic, wandering waterbird of the wetlands. He took the immense weight of human suffering and dissolved it into the waters of the Bhati, leaving behind melodies that continue to comfort our isolated, modern souls.