It appears the conditions of a pastoral economy are the most conducive to the blossoming of love. That is why many of our greatest stories of love belong to either the age of the pastoral mode of production or to a pastoral milieu in a later period.
Carnal love is about procreation. But does it have anything to do with the manner in which the mankind creates the material basis of its existence? For example, could Heer and Ranjha play their jeu d’amour in a hunting-gathering society? Obviously not. Procreation was there. But could the young people living perpetually on the brink of starvation elevate their mutual attraction to romance? Or could this attraction be freed from the domination of property once the agriculture had started yielding a surplus and thus becoming the dominant branch of production?
The pastoral mode can last long. The reason is not its strength, but its weakness. Its capital and product are not differentiated. Therefore, it cannot evolve into a higher mode as a result of its own process of accumulation. Moreover, it is dependent upon a dry climate. Thus, it does not evolve on its own. There has to be an external intervention to launch the process of its super session by another mode.
The space of the activity of grazing in the pastoral economy needs to be large, whereas the supervision of grazing itself can be done by a few workers spread thinly over that space. Moreover, the labour required, even for milking or slaughter, is not intensive. All these factors combined, i.e. emptiness of space, leisurely pace of work and the thinly-spread labour-force, create the conditions for the bored young people to meet without causing a scandal.
Chuchak, the father of Waris Shah’s Heer, is a landlord. But his land being in the narrow cultivated strip along the Chenab, he also has a herd of cattle which grazes on the uncultivated grassland beyond his cultivated fields. When he agrees to employ Dhidu, he calls him a son, but keeps him away from the family by assigning him to look after the livestock. However, this has the unintended effect of permitting the young man and Heer to meet freely and unobserved.
But, ultimately, when it comes to marriage, the decisive influence on Chuchak’s choice is not his having called Ranjha a son, but the correlation of economic strength between the Sials and the Kheras. Ranjha was a house-servant, while the Kheras were fellow-landlords. Here love has no place. Heer gauges the depth of the problem quicker. In desperation, she says to Ranjha:
“Heer akhdi Ranjha qahar hoya ithoon uthh kay chal jay chalna-ee,
Dovin uthh kay lamray rah poyay koee asan nay dais na milna-ee,
Jadoon jhugray varee mein Khayrayan day kasay assan nu mor na ghhalna-ee.”
However, here Ranjha at last grasps the disadvantage of his social position and gives up. But Heer does not, even after going to the house of her in-laws. The freedom that she had enjoyed in the company of Ranjha, in the pastures with their vast grassland, had given her both confidence and courage.
The oldest pastoral love story of South Asia is that of Krishna Govender or Lord of Herdsmen, commonly referred to as Kanhai, Shyam etc. The story is mentioned in the Upanishads, though many stories have been added later to the earlier legend.
He was from the tribe of Yadavs, i.e. cattle-breeders, and grew up frolicking with the wives and daughters of the cowherds.
“He embraces one woman, he kisses another, and fondles another beautiful one
“He looks at another one lovely with smiles, and starts in pursuit of yet another.”
He is remembered chiefly as the ideal lover. Even today, the popular songs, those of the seasons or the classical ones express the love of all women for Shyam (“Black” one of his names) - “kaonai gali gayo Shyam, mo pay daar diyo sari rang ki gagar, or bhari gagri mori dharkai Shyam.” Later, with the development of agriculture and its growing surplus, the legend also acquires a sufistic strain, e.g. “toray ang say ang mila kay ‘kanha’ mein to ho gaii kari.”
He rose originally by creating a state for himself in Mathura, but, pressed hard by enemies, he moved to Gujrat and created an even stronger state there. He destroyed many demons and supported the righteous, including the Pandavs against the Kuravs in the Battle of Mahabharat.
His image, therefore, is that of a mighty warrior fighting for truth and honour, and the ideal lover with whom every woman is in love. As the mankind struggled through the millennia against the depredation of the nature and the exploitation of the fellow-human, it had to create an ideal to give it hope of success. Krishna is that ideal, that hope!
The writer is a retired ambassador.
Email: abul_f@hotmail.com