Baba Bulleh Shah was a Punjabi Sufi poet of the Qadiri order, writing in the early 18th century as Mughal power waned. His chosen form was the — a short lyric made to be sung, and it still is: at shrines by qawwals, and on modern stages in arrangements we may link to but not host. His most beloved poem opens with a question and then answers it only by negation — I am not this, I am not that — until the self being described simply dissolves. That dissolution is the Sufi idea of : the annihilation of the small, labelled “I”, so that only the Divine remains.
The refrain ·
Original
ਬੁੱਲ੍ਹਾ
بُلھا
Transliteration
Bullā kī jāṇā maiṅ kaun
Literal
Bulleh — what know I — I, who?
Natural English
Bulleh, what do I know of who I am?
What's happening here
This single line anchors the whole poem. It returns after every stanza like a bell, and it is never resolved — the question is the point. By addressing himself in the third person (“Bulleh” — the vocative Bulleyā in many renderings), the poet already splits the self he is about to dismantle. And notice kauṇ, “who” — if you learned Sunder Mundriye, you have sung this word already. A nursery rhyme and an 18th-century mystic, asking with the same word.
- Refrain
- Rhetorical question
- Vocative self-address
- Sufi fanā
Verse
Original
ਨਾ ਮੈਂ ਵਿਚ ,
ਨਾ ਮੈਂ ਵਿਚ ਦੀਆਂ ਰੀਤਾਂ
ਨਾ ਮੈਂ ਪਾਕਾਂ ਵਿਚ ਪਲੀਤਾਂ,
ਨਾ ਮੈਂ ਮੂਸਾ ਨਾ ਫ਼ਿਰਊਨ
نہ میں وچ ،
نہ میں وچ دیاں ریتاں
نہ میں پاکاں وچ پلیتاں،
نہ میں موسیٰ نہ فرعون
Transliteration
Nā maiṅ momin vich masītāṅ,
nā maiṅ vich kufar diyāṅ rītāṅ
Nā maiṅ pākāṅ vich palītāṅ,
nā maiṅ Mūsā nā Firaun
Literal
Not I a believer in the mosques,
not I in the rites of unbelief
Not I among the pure or impure,
not I Moses, nor Pharaoh
Natural English
I'm no believer in the mosque, nor do I follow the ways of unbelief; I am neither the pure nor the polluted — neither Moses nor Pharaoh.
What's happening here
He rejects orthodoxy and its opposite in the same breath, then the holy and the profane, then even the archetypes of prophet and tyrant. To say what he is, he first refuses every category others would sort him into. The rhyme does quiet work too: masītāṅ / rītāṅ — “mosques” and “rituals” yoked together sonically, which is itself the argument: both are practices, and neither is God.
- Anaphora (“Nā maiṅ…”)
- Antithesis
- Apophasis (via negativa)
Verse
Original
ਨਾ ਮੈਂ ਅੰਦਰ ਵੇਦ ਕਿਤਾਬਾਂ,
ਨਾ ਵਿਚ ਭੰਗ ਨਾ ਸ਼ਰਾਬਾਂ
ਨਾ ਮੈਂ ਰਿੰਦਾ ਮਸਤ ਖ਼ਰਾਬਾਂ,
ਨਾ ਵਿਚ ਜਾਗਣ ਨਾ ਵਿਚ ਸੌਣ
نہ میں اندر وید کتاباں،
نہ وچ بھنگ نہ شراباں
نہ میں رِند مست خراباں،
نہ وچ جاگݨ نہ وچ سوݨ
Transliteration
Nā maiṅ andar ved kitābāṅ,
nā vich bhang nā sharābāṅ
Nā maiṅ rindā mast kharābāṅ,
nā vich jāgaṇ nā vich saun
Literal
Not I within the Vedas and books,
not in bhang nor wines
Not I the reveller, drunk and ruined,
not in waking nor in sleep
Natural English
I am not in the Vedas or the scriptures, nor in intoxicants and wine; I am not the reckless drunkard — nor am I in waking, nor in sleep.
What's happening here
The negations widen to take in scripture and intoxication together — the sober scholar and the ecstatic drunkard alike — and then even consciousness itself. Naming both waking and sleep is a way of saying every state: he is in none of them.
- Anaphora
- Merism (waking / sleep = all states)
- Apophasis
Verse
Original
ਨਾ ਮੈਂ ਅਰਬੀ ਨਾ ਲਾਹੌਰੀ,
ਨਾ ਮੈਂ ਹਿੰਦੀ ਸ਼ਹਿਰ ਨਗੌਰੀ
ਨਾ ਹਿੰਦੂ ਨਾ ਤੁਰਕ ਪਿਸ਼ਾਵਰੀ,
ਨਾ ਮੈਂ ਰਹਿੰਦਾ ਵਿਚ ਨਦੌਨ
نہ میں عربی نہ لاہوری،
نہ میں ہندی شہر نگوری
نہ ہندو نہ ترک پشاوری،
نہ میں رہندا وچ ندون
Transliteration
Nā maiṅ arabī nā lāhorī,
nā maiṅ hindī shahr Nagaurī
Nā Hindū nā Turak Peshāwarī,
nā maiṅ rahndā vich Nadaun
Literal
Not I Arab nor Lahori,
not I Indian of the city Nagaur
Not Hindu nor Turk of Peshawar,
not I dwelling in Nadaun
Natural English
I am no Arab, nor a man of Lahore; no Indian from the town of Nagaur; neither Hindu nor Muslim of Peshawar — nor do I make my home in Nadaun.
What's happening here
Finally he dissolves nation, city, and religion at once — the very labels people fight and die over. For a reader in the diaspora, whose sense of origin is already complicated, this refusal of any fixed homeland can land with unexpected force.
- Anaphora
- Catalogue of places
- Apophasis
Why these words — and why this is dangerous poetry
Bulleh Shah, a Muslim, sets against — the sharpest binary available in his religious vocabulary — and then refuses both sides of it. He does not say “I am a good Muslim.” He does not say “all religions are one,” which would be a platitude. He says: neither of your two boxes contains me, and I do not know what does. The poem is built entirely out of what the speaker is not; the self is the hole left behind.
And a word inside the verse tells its own story: masīt, not the Arabic-Urdu masjid. The word has been worn smooth by Punjabi mouths — a loanword that became native. Languages digest what they borrow; here is the tooth-mark.
What it cost, and why it lands today
This is not gentle ecumenism. It is a man dismantling his own identity in public, in the 18th century, in the language of the street rather than the language of the learned — and it cost him. Bulleh Shah's devotion to his master Shah Inayat, who was of a lower caste, scandalised his own family and community, and tradition holds he was denied burial in the main graveyard at Kasur.
Two and a half centuries on, the poem is still sung — and its central question travels effortlessly across every border it names. A reader who is not quite one thing and not quite another may find that a line written in 1740 was written for them.
Keep going
- Another Bulleh Shah kafi, word by word: “Tere Ishq Nachaya” in the Parallel Reader.
- The same question, from the other end of life: the playground chant Kokla Chhapaki turns on jihṛā — “the one who” — the answering partner of this poem's kauṇ. Tap both words; the archive draws the link itself.
- Before Bulleh Shah: Baba Farid, five centuries earlier, addressing himself the same way.
Sources & further reading
- J. R. Puri & T. R. Shangari, Bulleh Shah: The Love-Intoxicated Iconoclast — translations and commentary.
- Christopher Shackle, essays on Punjabi Sufi poetry and the kāfī form.
- Verses are traditional and in the public domain; transliteration and translation here are editorial.