ABSTRACT
It has been remarked that human and divine language differ in one significant way, in that while God’s names apply properly to each individual thing, human language tends to “over-name” things (Benjamin 1986: 330). The corpus bearing the signature of Kabir is a singular instance of this Adamite curse, which bears the secret both of creative expression and of the loss of original meaning. “Kabir” points us to the idiomatic core of a language’s history, where there is a ceaseless struggle between competing claims for nation in such terms as tradition, history and community. By the same token, Kabir draws our attention to that recalcitrant strain in language in general which, by refusing to remain still, helps turn the act of speech and the movement of writing into an untimely resource for marginalized groups such as untouchables, who describe themselves today as dalits (“the downtrodden”) and tribals. Couched in the many ways in which Kabir is sung, his Word (shabd ) rises like a vast rumor from the western to the eastern reaches of north India and garners in this way new signatures, verses and meanings. Enough to say there has never been a more adaptable body of work than Kabir’s in the caste-riven society of the north, giving it an afterlife in popular song and cult very much like that of the ceaselessly transformable epics and romances of old.
