{"id":395,"date":"2007-11-02T02:05:52","date_gmt":"2007-11-02T02:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/naveenbachwani.wordpress.com\/2007\/11\/02\/disambiguity\/"},"modified":"2007-11-02T02:05:52","modified_gmt":"2007-11-02T02:05:52","slug":"disambiguity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/beingdad\/2007\/11\/disambiguity\/","title":{"rendered":"Disambiguity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wikipedia writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

He was a mystic poet or poet sants<\/em> of India, whose literature has greatly influenced the Bhakti<\/em> as well as Sufi<\/em> movements of India.\u00a0 According to some sources, he was born to a Hindu Brahmin widow and later adopted by childless Muslim weavers – Niru and Nimma –\u00a0who found him near Lahara Tala lake, adjacent to the holy city of Varanasi.<\/p>\n

A contemporary of Guru Nanak Dev, who sang the ideals of seeing all of humanity as one, and also the path of natural oneness with God; some even believe him to be the preceptor of Guru Nanak.<\/p>\n

His teachings are distinguished theologically by inward-loving devotion to a divine principle, and socially by an egalitarianism opposed to the qualitative distinctions of the Hindu caste hierarchy and to the religious differences between Hindu and Muslim.<\/p>\n

He is also one of the 99 names of God in Islam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

PoetSeers adds<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When he died, his Hindu and Muslim followers started fighting about the last rites\u2026 The Muslim followers buried their half and the Hindu cremated thier half. In Maghar, his tomb and samadhi <\/em>still stand side by side.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Finally, Wikipedia has a \u201cdisambiguity<\/a>\u201d page on him!\u00a0 The name I\u2019m talking about is Kabir<\/em>!<\/p>\n

To be honest, when the wife and I decided to name our second child and only son – Kabir, we did not know all these facts. (Elsewhere on this blog, he will be known as “Tiger”)<\/p>\n

While we received many many emails from friends and family, commenting on the excellent choice of our son\u2019s new name, we also heard cautious comments from wellwishers who were \u201cconcerned\u201d that the name sounds \u201ctoo Muslim\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cIt may make things difficult in the future\u201d, some of them said\u2026\u00a0 \u201cYou know how 9\/11 has changed the way the world responds to Muslims in general\u201d, others commented\u2026\u00a0 It\u2019s all one global village – you know how it is?<\/p>\n

Naturally, the wife was also a bit concerned.\u00a0 Was it too Muslim-sounding after all?<\/em><\/p>\n

This post is my response to all those fears of all our near and dear ones.\u00a0 No, I do not think that it sounds \u201ctoo Muslim\u201d.\u00a0 And, so what if it does?\u00a0 If anything, the\u00a0poet\u2019s life<\/em> was dedicated to opposing the differences between Hindus and Muslims!\u00a0 Shouldn\u2019t that count for something?<\/p>\n

Incidentally, our <\/em>Kabir is born to a Hindu father\u00a0(whose Sindhi community follows the Guru Granth Sahib <\/em>of the Sikhs in which Kabir\u2019s words are included!) and a Mangalorean-Catholic mother.\u00a0 Not to mention, his baptism <\/em>is scheduled for next month.<\/p>\n

Some ambiguity can make for an interesting life, don\u2019t you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He was a mystic poet or poet sants of India, whose literature has greatly influenced the Bhakti as well as Sufi movements of India. According to some sources, he was born to a Hindu Brahmin widow and later adopted by childless Muslim weavers – Niru and Nimma – who found him near Lahara Tala lake, adjacent to the holy city of Varanasi… He is also one of the 99 names of God in Islam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenthood"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/beingdad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/beingdad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/beingdad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/beingdad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/beingdad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/beingdad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/beingdad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/beingdad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/beingdad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}